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Class fl/7B 

Book T5< 

Copyright N" 

COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN 
PEOPLE 



A HISTORY 



OF 



THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 



FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE 

Author of "The Constitutional History of the United States, 1765-1895, 

"A (State) Constitutional History of the American 

People, 1776-1850," etc., etc. 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1901 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Cofits Received 

MAY. 20 1901 

COPVRIGHT ENTRY 

CLASS Ct^XXc. N... 
COPY J. 



Copyright 

By a. C. McCLURG & CO. 

A. D. igoi 






TO 

MARION HAYWOOD 

AND 

MARION EDGERTON THORPE 



/ ha7'f HO cxpfctation that any man will read history aright who thinks 
that luhat was done in a remote age, by men lohose names have resounded far, 
has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day. — Embrson. 

You will have to look back u/>on a century of national advancement without 
a parallel in history, and to look forward to its probable continuance upon a 
still larger scale, with an accumulation of high duties and responsibilities 
proportioned to an ever-growing power. — Gladstone (Letter to the Centennial 
Commission, July 20, 1887). 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Indians i 

II The Discovery of America g 

III The Spanish Conquest 20 

IV French Colonization 25 

V Virginia , . 30 

VI New York 47 

VII The New England Colonies . . . . 56 

VIII New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware . 83 

IX Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia ... 92 

X England and France at War for the Continent 105 

XI Who Shall Tax America? 125 

XII Colonial Days . .141 

XIII Independence Declared 159 

XIV The Founding of the Republic ... 168 
XV The War for Independence ..... 203 

XVI The League of States 222 

XVII A More Perfect Union Necessary . . .255 

XVIII The Constitution 283 

XIX The Rise of Party Government .... 290 

XX Neutrality and Union 297 

XXI The Fall of the Federalist Party . . . 304 

XXII The Ways of the New Nation .... 311 

XXIII The Ruin of American Commerce . . . 328 

XXIV The Second War for Independence . . 339 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

. XXV The Political Interregnum 345 

XXVI In the Youth of the Republic • . . , 353 

XXVII In the Days of Jackson and Van Buren , . 369 

XXVIII The Aspiration of the Whigs .... 378 

XXIX Slavery Agitation 388 

XXX State Sovereignty 405 

XXXI The States Before the Civil War . .417 

XXXII Men and Manners Before the War . . 425 

XXXIII The Civil War 4_^i 

XXXIV Reconstruction . ^5^ 

XXXV The States After the Civil War . . .482 

XXXVI Industrial and Territorial Expansion . . 497 

XXXVII The Struggle for the Right to Vote . . 527 

XXXVIII The Hundred Years' Migration • • • 555 

XXXIX America in Our Own Times 569 



Index 6j3 



LIST OF MAPS 



FACING PAGE 

OCATION OF Indian Tribes ........ 3 

RiTisH Colonies at the Outbreak of the Revolution, 
1775 125 

he United States, Showing Extent of the Southern 
Confederacy 445 

HE United States, Showing Acquisition of Territory, 
1783 TO 1897 , . . . 497 

HE Philippine Islands 523 

HE World, Showing United States and its Posses- 
sions, 1900 593 



xii PREFACE 

clear until the nineteenth century had entered its last 
quarter. 

It is well, therefore, to use the oldest and best name as 
our national name: the name America, sanctioned by dis- 
covery and exploration during our earliest annals, and by 
usage among the Fathers at the time when the foundations 
of the nation were laid. 

The thoughtful student of history soon discovers that it 
records two groups of interests: the one economic, the 
other political ; the first, a group of ideas which control 
the conduct of men as bread-winners; the second, a group 
of ideas which control men in their civil relations. With- 
out presuming to enter upon a discussion of controversial 
topics, or to espouse the interests of any creed or party, I 
have sought in this volume to narrate in a simple, compact, 
and comprehensive way the history of four centuries of 
America. To do this well within the limits of a single vol- 
ume is difficult. The ruling canon of the book has been to 
be brief, clear, and accurate. The Nation is the chief 
theme. It was not until 1876 that a political party in 
America for the first time declared that "the United States 
is a Nation." The book is confined to a narrative of the 
things best worth knowing about America. It does not 
aim to be exhaustive, but it aspires to be helpful and sug- 
gestive. It was begun in 1888, and by the spring of 1897 
had been brought down to the events of that time. The 
narrative was later carried down to the close of the Fifty- 
sixth Congress. Some portions of the early chapters, and 
the entire narrative after 1765, are based on the primary 
sources; but the author would do himself injustice were he 
here to omit expressing his obligations to a large number 
of specialists whose particular investigations have been con- 
sulted. If the narrative lacks interest, the fault is not in 
the theme but in the telling. 



PREFACE xiii 

The spirit which has guided me while writing the vol- 
ume is well expressed in the words of counsel uttered to 
the American people more than a century ago : 

"Promote them," said Washington; "promote as an 
object of primary importance, institutions for the general 
diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of 
a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential 
that public opinion should be enlightened." 

Francis Newton Thorpe. 

Mount Holly, New Jersey, April i6, 1901. 



A HISTORY 

OF THE 



AMERICAN PEOPLE 



CHAPTER I 

THE INDIANS 

1620-1 729 

For ages before the discovery of this continent by 
Europeans, it was inhabited by a race of men distinguished 
by their copper-colored skins, their small black, bright eyes, 
their high cheek-bones, beardless faces, long, coarse, and 
straight black hair, and their lean, sinewy, and erect forms. 
Columbus, mistaking the new continent for India, called 
them Indians. The native races themselves had no name 
in common, and each man was nurtured in the belief that 
his tribe was the greatest on earth, and that he was the 
greatest of his tribe. Columbus, therefore, did what neither 
the savages themselves nor the most learned societies of 
civilized men would have agreed to do — he gave the original 
inhabitants of America one common name, Indians; for 
he thought he had reached India and that these strange 
people were some of its inhabitants. Time has partly cor- 
rected his error by designating the islands as the West 
Indies, but the native tribes, from Cape Horn to the 
Yukon River, have been called by the name Columbus 
first used, though it is a misnomer. Whence these people 
came is unknown. 

The Indians are a strange people; they have traditions, 
but no history. Civilized people erect monuments of vari- 
ous kinds to commemorate their own deeds and those of 
their ancestors. Throughout the length and breadth of the 
United States there does not exist, and probably there never 



2 THE INDIANS 

did exist, a monument of any kind deliberately erected 
by an Indian or a tribe to commemorate an event in Indian 
history. This is a highly interesting fact. Here, living 
to-day, is a people that builds no monuments; that writes 
no records; that leaves no intentional sign of its existence. 
Mankind in its earliest years could do no less. Unques- 
tionably the American Indians are one of the oldest races of 
men on the earth. Compared with them, the Assyrians, 
the Chinese, the Egyptians, are children of yesterday. 

Geologists tell us that America is older than Europe or 
Asia; that the oldest land in the world is the St. Lawrence 
valley; the oldest land in the United States, the Adiron- 
dacks. Thus the land and the native races of our country 
are the oldest on the globe. To study the characteristics 
of the American Indian is to find further proof of this. 
The Indian never laughs or jokes in the presence of a white 
man, or a stranger; whatever his years — boy, youth, or 
man — he has the saturnine touch of old age upon him. 
His moral sense is scarcely developed. He wholly lacks 
industrial invention ; had he possessed it, he would have 
been a builder. He was a wild animal in human form. 
Soon, the colonists discovered that he was far more danger- 
ous than any wild beast. His intellect was wonderfully 
keen. Within the range of his activities it could not be 
surpassed. An American Indian differs from all other sav- 
ages in being an intellectual wild man, cunning beyond the 
cunning of any other savage the world has ever seen. 

Europeans found this country a scene of ancient feuds 
and perpetual war. It was a world of ceaseless bloodshed. 
In consequence, the native population of the continent was 
small. Some portions had no human inhabitants. This 
was true of the greater part of Massachusetts, southern New 
Hampshire, and Vermont. Smallpox and the Mohawks 
there had destroyed the native tribes. All down the Atlan- 
tic coast, as far as the Savannah River, the first colonists 
found few Indians, and these only remnants of once power- 
ful tribes. The Five Nations called the Indians on the 
Delaware and the Susquehanna "women." It was fortu- 
nate for the first settlers that the tribes along the coast were 
so feeble. Had the seat of the Five Nations extended over 








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THEIR NUMBERS 3 

this region, the settlement of America would have been 
long delayed. 

There were many tribes and clans, but only three races 
of Indians east of the Mississippi. The division was never 
made by the Indians themselves, but by white men who 
base their opinions on the study of Indian languages. The 
three great race divisions were Algonquin, Iroquois, and 
Alobilion, or Maskokian. A fourth race division, the 
Sioux, or Dakota family, was represented in the tribes 
living between the Santee and Potomac rivers. At the 
time of the settlement of Jamestown, there were less than 
two hundred thousand Indians, within the present boun- 
daries of the United States, east of the Mississippi River, 
Of the number to the west, there is no knowledge. There 
are about as many Indians within the United States to-day 
as there were east of the Mississippi, two centuries and 
a half ago. 

Of the tribes that acted so important a part in the his- 
tory of our country during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, the Five Nations numbered about ten thousand 
at the time of their greatest strength ; the Chickasaws, 
Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and Catawbas, about sixty 
thousand ; the tribes from Ohio to Lake Superior were far 
less numerous. Marquette and other French explorers, 
who first visited the old Northwest, passed over hundreds 
of miles of the wilderness and saw no signs of human popu- 
lation. It may safely be said that the original population 
of the continent has been greatly overestimated. An 
Indian war party of a hundred was seldom seen ; of a thou- 
sand, only a few times in our history; of ten thousand — 
never. 

A family lived in a tepee, lodge or wigwam, which was 
made by spreading bark or skins over poles usually like 
a tent, but among the Five Nations, like a house. The 
Seneca long-house usually consisted of twenty-four sections; 
those at the ends containing provisions; each of the others 
containing a family. There were no windows. Along the 
sides were the sleeping quarters. At intervals, down the 
midway, were fires for cooking and heating. The smoke 
found its way out through the roof. The Five Nations had 



4 THE INDIANS 

a fixed home. The Indians of the Mississippi Valley used 
the tepee. The Mandans, on the upper Missouri, built 
a circular lodge, and covered the roof with clay which 
hardened in the sun like rock. The hearth fire was in a pit 
in the center of the floor; around this the families were 
arranged, each having a triangular section. 

Among the Indians, all relationship was through the 
clan, which consisted of all families descended from the 
same female ancestor. Each clan was a unit, having its 
chiefs, sachems, warriors, medicine-man, its food, land, and 
name in common. Three famous clans of the Five Nations 
were the Wolf, the Bear, and the Turtle. The Wolf was 
the token of the Wolf clan, a sort of earmark to a large 
family group. All clans having a common ancestor made 
up a tribe and spoke a tribal tongue. The Five Nations 
were a league of tribes. The Indians were much given to 
debating all important matters in council. Here the tribes 
were represented by the older and most distinguished 
sachems. A chief was a leader of a war party. The 
most famed leader was usually the spokesman for a tribe. 

The Indian women did all the work; moved the lodges 
and put them up at the new camps; kept the traditions of 
the tribe and owned all the land. The torturing of prison- 
ers was their peculiar right. Indian women originated the 
most cruel tortures inflicted on that great company of white 
captives from the days of Captain John Smith to the days 
of General Custer. Indian children grew up with the dogs. 
Discipline among them was unknown. They differed from 
the elders only in size and strength. The women taught 
the children how to torture prisoners; the men taught them 
to hunt, to war, and to boast. 

Down to the coming of the whites, the Indians dressed 
in skins, or ornamented themselves with feathers; colored 
their own skins with clay and the juice of plants, and were 
armed only with bows, arrows, spears, clubs, and toma- 
hawks of stone. They lived almost solely on animal food, 
corn, beans, and pumpkins. They made bags of skins, filled 
them with water, heated this by throwing in hot stones, 
and then cooked their food. They made canoes of bark 
sewed with thongs of deerskin, and smeared the joints with 



INDIAN IDEALS 5 

the gum of trees. The women sometimes made crude pot- 
tery and clay pipes, ornamenting their work with stripes of 
color. All the tribes wandered about their own hunting- 
grounds as fancy or necessity led them. 

The extent of the religion of the Indians has been a 
theme of much discussion. The wind, the thunder, the 
lightning, the clouds, the rain, the stars, even the streams 
and forests, the bear, the fox, and the buffalo, were in some 
vague sense gods to them. The idea of a supreme God, a 
moral Being, such as is depicted in the Bible, never occurred 
to them. No Indian language ever contained a word which 
conveyed to an Indian the meaning of the English word 
"God." The French priests, who were the first to estab- 
lish missions among the Indians, soon discovered that the 
Indian languages did not contain words that would express 
Christian, or even moral, ideas. Of course this was also 
true of the incapacity of these languages to express ideas 
of civilization in general. 

An Indian's ideal was to become a famous hunter and 
warrior. He was bred from infancy to be a master of 
woodcraft. He could imitate any bird or beast; he could 
outwit the fox, outrun the wolf, take the moose by sur- 
prise, and entrap the wildest animal. As a warrior, he was 
a wild beast that could think and plan. "It is doubtful that 
two tribes, or even two Indians, ever met in a fair open 
fight. To ambush the enemy, to kill him in his sleep — 
this was valor. To wear a scalp at the belt was a certifi- 
cate of the skill of a veteran — a title to the chieftainship. 
No promise could hold or treaty bind such a people. 

The Indians may be said to have welcomed Europeans. 
The Hurons at once took Champlain into their confidence, 
made him their ally, and had him turn his guns upon their 
ancient foes, the Five Nations. The next acquisition was 
of guns, powder, ball, and scalping-knives. Then the 
Indians were ready to follow their old foes and destroy the 
new-comers. But the whites brought with them a weapon 
that cut off the Indians more quickly than war. This was 
rum, which the Indians called "firewater." They speedily 
practiced all the vices of civilization. They did not take 
to its virtues. 



6 THE INDIANS [1620-1763 

During the seventeenth century, the settlers were usu- 
ally on friendly terms with their Indian neighbors, who with 
few exceptions were the remnants of once strong tribes. 
They were enfeebled by decay, broken in spirits, and quite 
ready to receive the protection and help of the whites. This 
condition of affairs continued till the Franco-English strug- 
gle began, in 1689. There were exceptions, however, as 
the war with the Pequots in Connecticut, in 1636; with 
the Mohicans in Massachusetts, in 1637; with King Philip 
in 1675, and with the Tuscaroras at the close of the seven- 
teenth century. But with the opening of the seventy years' 
war between France and England for the possession of the 
continent, the Indian tribes suddenly became important 
military factors. The ancient feud between Algonquin and 
Iroquois was resumed ; the Five Nations kept pretty steadily 
with the English; all the other tribes, sooner or later, 
joined the French. These alliances greatly affected all the 
tribes from the Hudson to the Mississippi, and from the 
Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The bow and arrow gave place 
to the rifle; the tribes were greatly decreased in numbers 
by drunkenness, endless broils, and smallpox. 

The Indians gained nothing by the French and Indian 
wars. When in 1763 the country east of the Mississippi 
became English s(3il, it seemed, for a time, that the Indians 
west of the Allegheny were to be left forever undisturbed 
within their vast domain. This was the plan of the British 
government. It was also the plan of Pontiac, "king and 
lord of all the Northwest," and in a famous conspiracy he 
planned, in 1765, to drive the English into the sea; but in 
spite of King George and Pontiac, the settlers pressed over 
the mountains and sought homes in the Mississippi Valley. 
For the first time the English government and the colonies 
were united against the Indians, and the year that wit- 
nessed the imposition of the stamp tax (1765) witnessed the 
utter overthrow of Pontiac. 

The war for the independence of the United States again 
divided the Indian tribes, and this time by a new division: 
allegiance to Congress or to the king. In the Declaration 
of Independence the king was accused of endeavoring "to 
bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian 



1763] RESERVATIONS 7 

savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished 
destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." With the 
establishment of a national government, all the Indians 
within the United States became subject to its authority; 
and their history is best told in connection with the acqui- 
sition and settlement of the south and west. 

There is probably not a county in the United States 
which does not show vestiges of this vanished and van- 
quished race. Streams, mountains, rivers, states, cities, 
preserve many Indian names. In some places, as in Ohio 
and Missouri, curious mounds and earthworks in rude order 
attest the antiquity of this strange people. Museums are 
now filled with Indian collections, gathered to preserve 
some relic of their language, their customs, and their tra- 
ditions. The dead Indian, like the Egyptian mummy, is 
treasured as a vestige of an ancient world. But no one 
should confound fact with fiction by reading into Indian 
life and character qualities which the race never possessed. 
For four hundred years it has resisted civilization. During 
the three centuries of its close contact with Europeans, it 
has preserved all its ancient character, except in those 
limited areas, called reservations, where the compulsion of 
civilization has forced a change. In the course of our narra- 
tive we shall meet with great Indians — eloquent, like Red 
Jacket, or politic, like Tecumseh. But even these have 
displayed only the characteristics of their race and remained 
intellectual barbarians. 

The history of the Indians is that of a vanishing race. 
We know that they completely possessed the country at 
the time when the colonies were first settled. A century 
and a half later, at the close of the French and Indian war 
(1763), the Proclamation Line was the frontier. Westward 
lay the Indian Country. Up to this time the tribes had 
figured as allies of the English or of the French in the long 
struggle for the continent. England won, and the Indian 
Country was set apart by the king as a western and per- 
manent Indian reservation. Pontiac then made a league 
of the tribes to exterminate the whites. His conspiracy 
failed. Soon after the war for independence broke out, and 
the tribes divided, some fighting for Congress, others for 



8 THE INDIANS [1789 

the king. Congress took up the Indian question when it 
made treaties of peace with the Six Nations, and secured 
their neutrality during the Revolution. 

With the organization of the United States, the national 
government was given sole power to make treaties with 
the Indians, and from 1789 to the present time they 
have been the subject of a vast amount of legislation by 
Congress. The policy of the government has been to treat 
each Indian tribe as a nation; to remove the tribes east of 
the Mississippi to the Indian Country west of it; to estab- 
lish Indian reservations and keep the tribes within them; 
to purchase the reservations, or parts of them, and open 
them to white settlers; to consolidate the tribes in new, 
smaller, and more remote reservations; to pay the Indians 
annuities for their lands, and thus to make most of the 
tribes dependent upon the government for food and clothes, 
and to allow churches and schools among them. 

The effect of this policy has been the disappearance of 
the Indians almost entirely east of the Mississippi, and the 
concentration of the remaining tribes on the reservations. 
Thus the Indian of to-day is wholly dependent on the 
United States government for all his supplies. There are 
exceptions, as the five civilized tribes of the Indian Terri- 
tory practice all the trades and follow the usual occupations 
of white men, and have a government organized much like 
that of white territories. They have their laws, books, and 
newspapers in their own language. But most of the Indians 
on the western reservations are degraded. On reservations 
east of the Mississippi, few pure blooded Indians can now 
be found. A map of Indian reservations to-day shows 
at a glance the striking contrast between the Indian Country 
now and its extent just before the American Revolution. 
Then it stretched an unbroken wilderness westward from 
the Alleghanies ; now it consists of a few dozen reservations 
scattered from Maine to Oregon. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
986-1520 

To this vast wilderness, '*the under-half of the world," 
sparsely inhabited by barbarous tribes and savage clans, the 
people of Europe were bound, eventually, to find their way 
and to extend civilization, as, ages ago, the people of Asia 
spread civilization over Europe. We do not know how the 
native races of America came here. This continent may 
once have been a peninsula of Asia, as Europe now is, and 
its original inhabitants may have wandered eastward from 
Asia to this country about the time when the first inhabi- 
tants of Europe wandered from Asia westward. The study 
of primitive speech, of ancient ruins, and of folk-lore throws 
a dim light on the subject, but nothing is known to which 
an exact date can be given till the tenth century. Adven- 
turous Northmen, of whom one Eric the Red is most 
famous, in the year 986, having passed westward over the 
Sea of Darkness, as the Atlantic was then called, sighted 
the coast of Labrador, sailed along the Grand Banks and 
visited portions of the New England coast, which from the 
abundance of its wild grapes they called Vinland. This 
may have been the shores of Long Island Sound. These 
voyages were sung in the Norse poems, called the sagas, 
but were soon forgotten. It has been said that some tra- 
dition of these adventures was known to Columbus, but 
this is doubtful. 

By the middle of the fifteenth century, geographical 
knowledge of the world was greatly extended. Trade and 
commerce then centered around the Mediterranean. Flor- 
ence, Genoa, Venice, and Lisbon were the commercial 
centers of Europe. A rich overland trade with Asia had 
been carried on uninterruptedly for centuries. The chief 
commercial center in the East was Constantinople, but in 



lo THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [1459 

1453 this city was captured by the Turks, who suddenly 
stopped the ancient course of trade and threatened the 
commercial towns of Europe with ruin. Bej^ond Constan- 
tinople and the Turkish Empire lay the rich marts of Asia, 
eager as ever to maintain commercial relations with Europe. 
Mow could the masters of Constantinople be circumvented? 
How could Europe reach the rich Orient as before? By 
land no longer, because the heavy duties imposed by the 
Turks barred the way. By water? But none had gone 
that way. The Portuguese had long been trading down the 
coast of Africa, and as a result of their voyages, Fra Mauro, 
in 1459, ^^^*^ made a map of the world, which, drawn in 
colors on oxhide, may be seen to this day in the library 
of the Doge's Palace in Venice. According to this map, 
Asia might be reached by way of the African coast; but 
the voyage would be very long and perilous. What ship 
could stand it? What sailors be induced to go? Fierce 
monsters lay in wait; poisonous winds blew; and even if 
a ship sailed safely down the world so far as the southern 
point of Africa, how could it sail up so far as Cathay — of 
Asia? When we reflect that as late as the time of Queen 
Anne, when Benjamin Franklin was a boy, it was commonly 
believed that the ocean abounded in terrible monsters which 
might seize and sink the largest and strongest ship, we can 
more easily understand the force of these superstitions 
about the sea which prevailed when Columbus was a boy. 
In our day, many people believe in the sea serpent, which 
they expect will some day coil itself about one of our largest 
steamships in midocean and settle with it to the bottom 
of the sea. On Fra Mauro's map, sea monsters were 
depicted in great variety ; but in spite of this portrayal of 
ignorance and superstition, the map showed the known 
world with wonderful accuracy. It depicted the principal 
features of Asia, Africa, and Europe, though it lacked North 
America, South America, and Australia. It was the of^cial 
map of the world, issued when Columbus was about twenty- 
three years of age. At this time, men believed that the 
sun revolved about the earth and that the earth was the 
center of the universe. 

Among the Italian sailors of these days was Cliristopher 



1474] TERRORS OF THE SEA ii 

Columbus, a native of Genoa, though his parents, like him- 
self, changed their abode several times, so that the place 
of his birth has been disputed. He said in his will that it 
was Genoa. Familiar with all the important ports of the 
Mediterranean, and witnessing the rapid decay of their once 
flourishing trade, he early began thinking how it might be 
regained. As he was a sailor-boy at nine, he probably first 
thought of the subject in his eighteenth or nineteenth year, 
for we know that he spent over thirty years in getting 
powerful princes interested in his plans. A hundred years 
before Columbus, Marco. Polo, an Italian, after long resi- 
dence in Asia, wrote a book of travels and adventures which 
were so wonderful as to be considered fabulous by the wise 
men of Europe, although Marco Polo returned to Venice 
with great riches in proof of his story. Familiar with this 
book, with Fra Mauro's map, and with the anxious wishes 
of the merchant princes of Europe, Columbus conceived the 
idea that Asia could be reached in a few days by sailing 
west, thus saving the long, dangerous voyage around Africa. 
In demonstration of his ideas he constructed maps and 
globes; he collected the opinions of the greatest philoso- 
phers: he gathered facts from his fellow-sailors who had 
seen strange objects such as bits of carved wood, branches 
of trees, and as some said, bodies of men, that had drifted 
across the Sea of Darkness. 

Brooding over all this evidence, Columbus was convinced 
that he could reach Asia by sailing west; could establish 
new routes of trade, and if heathen nations were found, he 
might be instrumental in converting them to the Christian 
faith. Did not all philosophers teach that the world was 
round like a ball? Did not Ptolemy compute its circum- 
ference at twenty-one thousand six hundred miles at the 
equator? And it would be much less on the parallel of 
Lisbon. But Columbus got greatest comfort from a phi- 
losopher and map-maker of Florence — famous throughout 
Europe — named Toscanelli, who, entering heartily into the 
idea, constructed a sailing-chart, on the basis of Fra Mauro's 
map. This was in 1474. For nearly twenty years Colum- 
bus treasured this chart; displayed it in evidence of the 
practicability of his ideas, and at last actually used it in his 



13 THE DISCOVERV OV AMERICA [1492 

voyaG[c, the most famous in tlic history of the world. Din- 
ing all those years, he let no chance slip by which promised 
help. Most men who met him thought him a lunatic or a 
dreamer. He would have fitted out a ship himself, but he 
was too poor. Therefore, for thirty-five years he sought a 
patron. The princes and merchants of Italy refused, the 
king and queen of Spain refused, and Portugal was inter- 
ested in an eastern route to Asia by way of Africa. Charles 
\'III. of France and Henry Yll. of England refused, but 
Columbus did not give up. Spain was struggling to expel 
the Moors, and Columbus foUowctl the camp of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, hoping for a victory that would move them 
to assist him. At length the queen, agitated by the desire 
to spread the Christian faith over Asia, and also stirred by 
Columbus to believe that great riches might be won for 
Spain in the west, ordered a fleet to be equipped at public 
expense and commissioned Columbus as admiral and gov- 
ernor of what lands he might discover. Three ships, the 
Pinta, the NiAa, and the largest, the Santa Maria, of about 
one hundred tons, were fitted out at Palos. Ninety sailors 
were gathered, but only by emptying the jails, at last. 
Some thirty gentlemen, adventurers, joined the expedition. 
Columbus superintended the equipment and bore part of 
the expense. A part was borne by the brothers Pinzon, 
owners and captains of the Pinta and Nifia. 

On Friday, August 3, 1493, the fleet sailed.* Leaving 
the Canaries, Columbus struck out boldly into the Sea of 
Darkness, expecting to sight Asia within a week. But five 
weeks passed. The men mutinied. Terror and treachery 
possessed them. To gain time, Columbus falsified the reck- 
oning; but the men could not be deceived much longer. He 
viewed with alarm the variation of the needle from the true 
north, lie explained it to the sailors so as to quiet their 
fears. The fact of the variation was previously unknown. 
Signs of land were seen. A flock of land birds caused the 
admiral to change his course more to the south. He had been 
sailing towartl that part of the coast now known as Carolina. 

•Aniont:; tho coninioii sailors were William Irish (or Harris ?\ of 
Cilwav, Ireland, and Anhnr Laws (or l.arkins?), of Kniriand. For a list 
of tho crews, see Fiske's Discovery of America, \'ol. II, .Appendix, 6. 



1493] DEPARTURE OF TME FLEET 13 

On the morning of I'^riday, October I2th, at two o'clock, 
tliere was a cry of "Land! land!" A light as of a torch 
signaling was detected in the distance. It was the open 
fire of a native, and the flickering effect was caused by the 
rise and fall of the waves between the ship and the shore. 
At dawn the land apjieared : a low, barren coast, one of the 
islands of the Bahama group. The exact spot is unknown. 
Probably it was Watling's Island. 

With all the i)om[> he could command, Columbus landed, 
and planting the Si)anish Hag, took possession of the land 
in the name of his sovereigns. He believed that he had 
reached an island off the coast of Asia and that India was 
just beyond. The natives, who received the Spaniards in 
friendly awe, he called Indians; and the name thus errone- 
ously given came at last to be applietl to all the native 
races of the New World. 

For five months Columbus explored the islands, dis- 
covering the principal member of the West India group, 
Cuba, and believed it to be the peninsula of Asia. Every- 
where he inquired for gold nnnes. The natives pointed to 
the west. He kept a journal, which he supplemented by 
letters to the king and tpieen, and to others in authority. 
In one of these letters he described the Indians, and said 
that they had no beds, but used JiaDiacas. This was the 
first word from a language of the New World that was trans- 
lated to the people of the Old. Great was the astonishment 
in Europe when the news of the admiral's discovery was 
heard. He had returned with strange fruits and plants and 
minerals, and with stranger people, called Indians. And he 
had found Asia and unlimited quantities of gold, and the 
king and queen had received him like a royal prince. 

At once he was asked to make another expediti(^n, anil 
it seemed as if half of the kingdom was eager to accompany 
him. In September, 1493, he started with a splendidly 
equipped fleet and a great company of adventurers, each 
of whom expected to find fabulous riches in the New World. 
He had left a colony on the island of Hayti, but not a trace 
of it was found, save a heap of stones and a rusty cannon. 
Those whom he left had taken no thought of agriculture. 
They had pillaged the natives, and in return had been over- 



14 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [1498, 1502 

powered and destroyed. Like the adventurers clamoring 
around Columbus, Spain clamored for gold. This was the 
great object of search, and this he failed to find, except in 
the ornaments of the natives. He enslaved the natives, 
and treated them with great cruelty. They fled at the 
approach of the Spaniards, but Columbus continued his 
explorations. His letters vividly describe new scenes. He 
mentions that it was common among the Indians to supply 
themselves with a small amount of food and long, hollow 
reeds, through which they inhaled the smoke of a plant. 
It was tobacco they were using. At this time tobacco- 
smoking was unknown to Europeans. They took the habit 
from the New World, but not till a hundred years after 
Columbus. On his return, he found himself the most un- 
popular, the most villified man in Spain. His second voy- 
age had been a failure. Meanwhile, England, France, and 
Portugal were planning western voyages. 

Still believing that he had found Asia, Columbus set 
out on his third voyage in 1498. Cuba was his first point; 
thence, coasting southwestward, on the ist of August he 
sighted the mainland of what he supposed to be Asia, and 
discovered the Orinoco River. In his letter describing this 
discovery, he declared his belief that the Orinoco flowed 
from the Garden of Eden, and that if any one could sur- 
mount its swift current, he could gain entrance to Paradise. 
Moreover, as the result of his three voyages he announced his 
belief that the world was shaped like a pear and that the Gar- 
den of Eden was located, as it were, at the stem of the pear. 

This voyage did not restore his lost fame. He was per- 
secuted and accused of maladministration. Again he set 
forth, in 1502, and spent two years exploring the coast of 
the mainland from the Orinoco to Mexico. But he found 
only slight traces of gold. He brought back nothing of 
interest to Spain. His enemies triumphed over him. He 
was imprisoned and bound in chains. Broken in health, 
but with great spirit persisting in his claims, he died, dis- 
appointed, in 1506, firmly believing that he had reached 
Asia, and with no idea that he had led the way to a new 
continent and laid the foundation of a fame that will last 
as long as time. 



1497] THE GARDEN OF EDEN 15 

Meanwhile, other navigators were seeking Asia — some in 
the east; others in the west. John Cabot, a Genoese Hke 
Columbus, had entered the service of Henry VII. of Eng- 
land, and in May, 1497, sailed westward from Bristol, in 
a small ship with eighteen men. He reached a coast, prob- 
ably Labrador, on the 24th of June. In April, 1498, 
accompanied by his son Sebastian, he went on a second 
voyage with five ships, followed the coast as far south as 
the Carolinas, and thus established the English title to a 
great part of the New World. 

Vincent Pinzon, who had accompanied Columbus on 
his first voyage as captain of the Pinta, sailed from Cadiz 
in May, 1497, and following his former course, spent six- 
teen months in voyaging in the West Indies and northwest- 
ward along the mainland. He relied upon the skill of a 
Florentine navigator who accompanied him, Amerigo Ves- 
pucci, usually known by the Latinized form of the name, 
who in a familiar letter to a friend later gave an interesting 
account of the strange coasts he had visited. No more 
memorable letter was ever written, for it was the means, 
eventually, of giving the New World its name. Pinzon 
and Vespucius coasted along what are now Florida, Geor- 
gia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, so that they saw more of 
the new continent than Columbus had seen. In 1497, 
Vasco da Gama, for Portugal, sailed southward from Lis- 
bon, was absent two years, and returned with a cargo of 
greater value than any ever brought to Europe before. He 
had reached Asia by way of the Cape of Good Hope, 
and had done what Columbus had tried to do. Columbus 
had brought back a few Indians, a few curious birds and 
plants, a few balls of raw cotton. Da Gama brought spices, 
silks, and precious stones. It was Da Gama's voyage that 
stirred Columbus to make his last voyage; but when he 
returned empty-handed, he was taunted as an impostor and 
reminded of Da Gama's rich cargo. The year 1497 is 
famous for great voyages: that of Cabot, to the mainland 
north; that of Columbus, to the mainland south; that of 
Da Gama, to Asia by way of the Cape, and a fourth, over- 
lapping both Columbus and Cabot and resulting in a name 
for the New World, 



i6 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [1493, 1512 

Spain and Portugal had long been rivals to gain control 
of the trade with Asia. War between them was possible. 
Spain besought the Pope, Alexander VI., to confirm to her 
the results of the voyage of Columbus. Taking a map of 
the world in 1493, he drew a meridian line one hundred 
leagues west of the Azores. Portugal at once protested, 
and a year later the Pope moved the line two hundred and 
seventy leagues farther west. All lands to the west of this 
line were to belong to Spain; all to the east, to Portugal. 
This explains how so much of the southern continent in 
the New World became Portuguese soil. 

Next to Columbus, as a navigator, ranked Americus 
Vespucius. He was a learned man, and after the return 
of the Pinzon expedition and the visit to the mainland 
north, he piloted another Spanish expedition along the 
coast of Brazil. Finding Indian villages built on piles, he 
called the place "Little Venice," Venezuela, as it remains 
to this day. The new line of demarcation was clearer on 
the Pope's map than to navigators. Stimulated by Da 
Gama's voyage, Portugal sent Cabral, late in 1499, with a 
fleet of thirteen ships, to follow in the same course. But 
Cabral got too far out to sea, and on the 22d of April, 
1500, sighted land, and claimed it as lying east of the papal 
line, and therefore as Portuguese soil. He sent a swift ship 
back to Lisbon with news of his discovery, and the king, 
eager to secure title, secured Vespucius as chief pilot in a 
new expedition, sailing in May, 1501. Vespucius ran down 
the Brazilian coast as far as the La Plata, and settled the 
question of Portugese supremacy in that part of the New 
World. He took the fleet southward into antarctic waters 
and then home. He had thus seen, in two voyages, more of 
the New World than either Columbus or Cabot, and nearly 
as much as both of them. He made three more voyages, 
become chief pilot of Spain, an office created for Columbus, 
and died in 15 12. He was a friend of Columbus, and in no 
way sought to deprive him of his fame. 

These early voyages stirred public interest throughout 
Europe. Thus far Spain and Portugal had been most 
active. Columbus was a prolific letter-writer, but nowhere 
did he hint that he had found a new world. The letter of 



1507-19] AMERICUS VESPUCIUS 17 

Vespucius suggested that a new continent had been found 
in the west, because Pinzon and Vespucius had passed 
through the Strait of Florida and along the mainland to the 
north, Columbus had strenuously contended that he had 
reached Asia, and others believed what he believed himself. 
The two events seemed quite different in importance. For 
centuries the existence of a fourth continent had been sur- 
mised. Mela, in the first century, had ventured to locate 
it on his map as "the opposite side of the world." Had 
not Vespucius piloted the Portuguese expedition to this 
long suspected region? Was not Brazil the "fourth part" 
of the world? There is no evidence that Columbus for a 
moment thought that Americus Vespucius was trying to 
rob him of his fame. In the west were many strange 
coasts; who could tell what might be found there? At this 
time there lived in St. -Die, France, one Martin Waldsee- 
miiller, a learned German map-maker and printer. He 
thought it time to bring out a new geography showing the 
latest discoveries. He did as geographers ever do when 
representing a new region ; he gave it the name of its sup- 
posed discoverer. As Vespucius was supposed to be the 
first who had seen this new continent, Waldseemiiller pro- 
posed that it be called America. This was in 1507. The 
name was first applied to a small portion of Brazil, south 
of the equator, but was gradually extended over the south- 
ern continent, and later over the northern. Thus America 
was named. It does not appear that Vespucius knew 
Waldseemiiller. 

Expeditions now multiplied. All Europe seemed in 
search of the Indies, and of g'^ld and slaves along strange 
coasts in the west. In 15 13, Balboa caught sight of the 
Pacific from a mountain-peak on the Isthmus of Panama. 
He called it the South Sea. America was supposed at this 
time to be a collection of islands. Doubtless the South Sea 
was only a continuation of the Sea of Darkness, and bore 
away to Asia by many safe passages. As yet no one 
dreamed of the magnitude of the two new continents. It 
was while in search of a passage through South America 
that Ferdinand Magellan, in 15 19, with five Spanish ships, 
coasting along Brazil, passed through the strait now bearing 



i8 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [1520 

his name. Continuing boldly westward, in spite of mutiny, 
hunger, thirst, and terrible sickness on board, he kept on. 
Stopping at the Philippines for supplies, Magellan was 
killed, but the remnant of the fleet set sail for Spain. One 
ship only, the Victoria, reached home after an absence of 
three years, having made the first voyage round the world. 

Thirty years had passed since the first voyage of Colum- 
bus, and many memorable voyages had followed it. Spain, 
Portugal, and England were now turning to America for 
greater riches and power. The Spanish had taken posses- 
sion of Cuba, Hayti, and San Domingo, and had established 
military governments there. The native population had 
been worked to death in the mines and supplanted by a pop- 
ulation of African slaves. South America, which was best 
known to the people of Spain and Portugal, has a climate 
in those parts first discovered similar to that of those 
countries, and promised an endless supply of gold and 
pearls. It was supposed to be one vast island, but North 
America was thought to consist of many small islands, or 
possibly to be only a peninsula of Asia. If by good for- 
tune a navigable strait through North America to Asia 
could be found, then the riches of Cathay might be acces- 
sible to Europe. So, after all, men held to the old idea of 
Columbus, and many spent fortune and life in search of a 
northwest passage. Not until 1728, when Vitus Bering, 
a Dane, in the employ of Russia, discovered the strait that 
bears his name, was it settled that North America is a conti- 
nent. This long period of more than two hundred and 
thirty years after Cabot's discovery of North America 
almost covers the period of American colonization. Georgia, 
the last English colony, was founded in 1733. 

The years when Magellan was circumnavigating the 
earth were the years of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, 
which Cortes began in 1520. Pizarro followed with the 
conquest of Peru. Though these countries lie far from our 
own, their early history had a mighty and most baneful 
influence on all America. So vast and unparalleled was the 
quantity of gold and silver obtained by Spain from Peru 
and Mexico, that it gave all Europe a false idea of the 
nature and resources of the New World. We shall see, as 



i52o] MAGELLAN 19 

the history of our country unfolds, that Europeans were 
long possessed with the idea that the precious metals might 
be found anywhere in America. Europe, at this time, and 
indeed down to the American Revolution, knew no other 
measure of wealth than gold and silver. To secure this and 
to monopolize trade were the principal motives of each 
European nation that explored and colonized America. 
For ages two vast continents had lain unsuspected in the 
west. Henceforth the history of the world would be 
changed, and all because Europe had found America. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SPANISH CONQUEST 

1493-1565 

Evidences of abundance of gold in America incited the 
Spanish to exploration and conquest. The world had not 
yet learned that the true measure of wealth is labor. That 
idea was first advanced by Benjamin Franklin in 1734, more 
than two hundred years after the events of which we have 
been speaking. The Spaniards saw nothing in the genial 
climate, the fertile soil, the valuable forests, the plants and 
the minerals of the new regions they explored. Only gold 
and silver would satisfy them, and to obtain it they risked 
their own lives and sacrificed the lives of the native Indians. 

By the papal decision, all countries lying west of the 
line of division were given to Spain. This gave North 
America, Central America, the West Indies, and the greater 
part of South America to that power, and this vast domain 
was overrun and divided into military districts by the middle 
of the sixteenth century. Spanish South America retained 
ancient names. To North America, as far as explored, the 
name New Spain was given. In that portion of our country 
once a part of New Spain, little now remains that suggests 
the Spanish conquest. From the Mississippi to the Pacific 
and from Mexico to Oregon are many towns, rivers, and 
mountains with Spanish names, and in Texas and the region 
acquired from Mexico many land titles run back to the 
Spaniards. Within this region the Spanish language is still 
used, though in an impure form. The laws of New Mexico, 
Arizona, and Colorado may be had printed in Spanish. 
East of the Mississippi Florida was Spanish, .^nd on the 
early maps Florida extended as far north as the Great 
Lakes. 

Within New Spain were found the most civilized of the 
native races, the Aztecs, the name of one of whose war-gods, 



1519-20] AZTEC TREASURE 21 

Mexitl, is preserved in the word "Mexico." There is a tra- 
dition that early in the fourteenth century the Aztecs were 
forced by their enemies to seek safety among the salt- 
marshes near lakes Chalco and Xochimilco, and there they 
built a pueblo, strong and mighty, which they called 
Tenochtitlan. While digging in the marsh, they found a 
stone upon which in a former time one of their priests had 
sacrificed a chieftain taken in war. A cactus was growing 
from a crevice in the stone, and seated on the plant was an 
eagle holding a serpent in its beak. An Aztec priest 
promptly declared the augury. The site should be called 
Tenochtitlan, "the place of the cactus rock," and the Aztec 
race should rise to glory and power, and here should be 
their chief seat. Thus was the ancient city of Mexico 
founded, and five centuries later, when the present Repub- 
lic of Mexico was established, the device chosen for its coat- 
of-arms was the ancient totem of the Aztecs: the cactus 
rock and the eagle holding a serpent in its beak. 

The more northerly of these tribes, greatly reduced in 
numbers, are still living in their ancient homes, the pueblos. 
They are the Moquis of Arizona and the Zunis of New 
Mexico. To the south, in Mexico and Central America, 
the tribes were more civilized. They built vast temples of 
stone, and many of the stones were of colossal size, elab- 
orately carved, and covered with sculpture and mystic 
symbols of a religious character. They showed an ele- 
mentary knowledge of the use of tools and some idea of 
art and architecture. But of far greater interest to the 
Spaniards was the abundance of gold and silver found 
among these people, and especially in Mexico. 

Never before in the history of the world was such a 
treasure of gold and silver acquired at one time, in so brief 
a campaign, as that resulting from the conquest of Mexico 
by Cortes, in 1519-20. Most of it was sent to Spain, 
but much of it fell into the hands of French and English 
privateers, like Sir Francis Drake ; for the great powers of 
Europe were at war during the greater part of the six- 
teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and English- 
men thought it no sin to act the pirate when Spanish 
money-ships from America were sighted. Spain sought to 



23 THE SPANISH CONQUEST [1513, 1528 

monopolize America, and this fostered European wars. 
Thus it came about that before America was a century old, 
Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Englishmen were fighting with 
one another in the wilds of the New World. The conquest 
of Mexico, resulting in such an unparalleled acquisition of 
the precious metals, tended to make the contest fiercer 
and longer and to rage over the entire continent. It seems 
strange that the discovery of "the lower half of the world" 
did not afford room enough for all who wished to come to 
America. Europe, at the time of the conquest of Mexico, 
had fewer people than now may be found in the four states 
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. 

Juan Ponce de Leon, who had accompanied Columbus 
in his second voyage, had spent most of the time since in 
pushing Spanish exploration. He was now an old man, 
but old age had overtaken him just when America was rich 
in exciting opportunities, and he longed for youth again. 
The Spaniards were often as credulous as they were cruel, 
and believed whatever the Indians told them, if it was 
likely to advance Spanish interests. De Leon was told of 
a fountain in the west which would restore his lost youth. 
After the treasures of Mexico, this story seemed highly 
probable. Straightway he planned to go in search of this 
fountain, and on Easter Sunday, 15 13, he sighted the low- 
lying coast of this wonderful land, to which he gave the 
name "Terra de Pascua Florida," "Land of the Flowery 
Easter," and a remnant of the old name still clings to a 
part of the land. Eight years he spent in search of the 
fountain of youth, when he was suddenly cut off by an 
Indian arrow. It was after De Leon's explorations that 
the Spanish maps show Florida extending northward to 
Lake Erie. 

Might there not be another Mexico farther north? In 
1528, Narvaez explored the bays and rivers along the north- 
ern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. He had heard that the 
Mobile Indians wore gold ornaments, and this news was 
enough to start up a Spanish expedition. But Narvaez, his 
four ships, and his four hundred men were wrecked at the 
mouth of the Mississippi, and nearly all were lost. The 
survivors, a negro, two common sailors, and De Vaca, the 



i54i] SPANISH DISCOVERIES 23 

treasurer of the expedition, were captured by the Indians, 
were held as curiosities, and for eight years were shown about 
from tribe to tribe; thus unwillingly they explored the 
country from the Mississippi to California. At last they 
reached a Spanish settlement on the Gulf of California, and 
related extravagant accounts of the riches they had seen. 
Most wonderful of all places, according to their story, were 
the Seven Cities of Cibola, which surpassed the City of 
Mexico in gold and silver. It was an old story, this of the 
Seven Cities — told for centuries. Thus far the cities had 
eluded explorers, but here were Spaniards who had actually 
seen them. They were Mexico and Peru threefold. At 
once, in 1540, Francisco de Coronado, with three hundred 
Spanish soldiers and eight hundred Mexicans, set out for 
the conquest of Cibola. For three years they marched up 
and down the country from the Gulf of Mexico to the Platte 
River. Coronado made report of the natural features of 
the country, but none of the Seven Cities. The only towns 
he found were the pueblos of the Moquis and Zunis, and 
they were then as they are to-day. The Spaniards never 
renewed the search, and from this time took little interest 
in this part of New Spain. 

In the year before Coronado started, Ferdinand de Soto, 
governor of Cuba, set out with nine ships, with five hun- 
dred and seventy soldiers, and two hundred horses in 
search of that Mexico in the north which Narvaez had failed 
to find. Was not the undiscovered land somewhere in 
Florida? For three years he searched for it, and struggled 
against the fiercest of Indian tribes; for he encountered the 
Seminoles, the Creeks, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws. 
He found endless swamps, impenetrable forests, maddening 
insects, prostrating fevers, swarms of hostile Indians, and 
death, but no gold or silver. At last the expedition came 
to a great river, called by the Indians the Father of Waters, 
and in the name of Spain, De Soto took possession of all 
lands watered by it and its tributaries. This left little 
of the country for England and France. De Soto had 
found the greatest of rivers, the Mississippi, and his grave, 
for his followers buried him in its waters by night, lest the 
Indians should know of their loss. Broken and demoral- 



34 THE SPANISH CONQUEST [1546, 1565 

ized, the remnant of the expedition got back to the Spanish 
settlements as best it could. But the dream of other Eldo- 
rados came to many a Spaniard, Frenchman, and English- 
man in after years. Men are still searching for gold mines. 

Not wholly disheartened by the fate of Narvaez and De 
Soto, the Spanish began a settlement in Florida in 1546, 
but the settlers were speedily massacred by the Seminoles. 
For the next twenty years, effort followed effort, till in 
1565 Menendez began the city of St. Augustine, the oldest 
European settlement in our country. No sooner was the 
town begun than its founders had to face a new foe. The 
French had started settlements in Florida, and a bloody 
conflict followed. 

It was now seventy years since the first voyage of Colum- 
bus, during which time Spain had explored, and conquered 
or laid claim to, the greater part of the New World. In 
our country, Spanish operations were carried on in Florida, 
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mis- 
souri, Kansas, Colorado, Indian Territory, Texas, New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California. Of the 
true wealth of this vast region they had little idea. St. 
Augustine in the east proved to be a permanent settle- 
ment, and in the west the Franciscans founded Santa Fe, 
in 1605, as the center of Spanish authority in the northern 
New Spain, From this point Spanish missions radiated 
among the tribes, and around each mission there sprang 
up a Spanish settlement. As the Spaniards sought the 
precious metals above everything else, New Spain had 
only a military government and did not depend on agricul- 
ture. The Spanish occupation continued in Florida till 
18 19; in Mexico, till 1820, 



CHAPTER IV 

FRENCH COLONIZATION 
1515-1759 

It seemed as if Spain was to have what she wished — the 
monopoly of America; but meanwhile other nations of 
Europe were carrying out rival plans. Before the death 
of Columbus, Breton fishermen had found their way to the 
Grand Banks, and they have continued to visit them ever 
since. Fish constituted an important food for the people 
of France and England, so numerous were the fast days, 
and British fishermen frequented the banks quite as freely 
as those from France. It was not until after the accession of 
Francis I,, in 15 15, however, that the French government 
took an active interest in America. Francis laughed at the 
pretensions of Spain and Portugal to monopolize Asia and 
America; he asked for father Adam's will in proof that 
Spain and Portugal were named as sole heirs to the New 
World. Evidently America was not to consist of New 
Spain only. The fishing interests were sufficient to pro- 
voke a contest for a share of the new found lands. 

In 1523, Francis gave his approval to the cruise of Ver- 
razano, a bold navigator, who, after the manner of the 
times, had gone in search of a fleet of Spanish galleons laden 
with Mexican gold, and had succeeded in capturing an 
immense treasure. The royal favor seems to have changed 
Verrazano into a French explorer. He sailed along the 
coast from New Hampshire to Carolina, claiming the coun- 
try for France. Jacques Cartier, in 1535, sailed up the St. 
Lawrence as far as the site of Montreal, where he found an 
Iroquois village. This was the beginning of the French 
occupation of North America. Twenty-five years passed, 
but France did nothing in colonization. Her wasteful reli- 
gious wars absorbed all her energies. One immediate effect 
of these wars was the effort of many Huguenots to leave 

25 



36 FRENCH COLONIZATION [1562, 1608 

France and find peace and quiet in America. It would 
have been better for New France had they been allowed to 
go freely. The great admiral Coligny, a leader among the 
Huguenots, conceived a scheme for their colonization in the 
New World, and in 1562 a settlement was begun under 
Jean Ribau in Florida. This was about the time that St. 
Augustine was planned by the Spanish. For three years 
there were signs of prosperity, when suddenly Menendez, 
of whom we have already heard, surprised and exterminated 
the settlement. Some seven hundred men, women, and 
children were butchered, and chiefly because they were 
Huguenots. The French government was hostile to them 
and on secret terms with Spain respecting them, so that it 
made no effort to bring Menendez to justice. But justice 
came. Dominique de Gourgues, a wealthy private gentle- 
man, secretly sent an expedition to revenge his countrymen. 
In 1568, the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine was sur- 
prised and destroyed. "I do this not as to Spaniards but 
as to assassins," were the words which De Gourgues 
burned on boards placed above the heads of the dead 
Spaniards. And Menendez found the notice two years 
later. The destruction of two colonies on the same place 
illustrates the character of the times, when rival nations 
contended for supremacy in the American wilderness. 
France made no further effort to colonize Florida, and it 
remained a part of New Spain. 

In the year when Santa Fe was founded, the religious 
wars in France ceased, and Frenchmen began to think of 
America again. The fur trade attracted them, and they 
planned to secure its monopoly, just as the Spanish planned 
to monopolize the American output of gold and silver. In 
1603, the French government empowered De Monts to colo- 
nize North America anywhere from New York Bay to Cape 
Breton. Henry IV. granted him a monopoly of the fur 
trade within these limits, and from the Atlantic to the South 
Sea. The scheme was visionary and unsuccessful, though 
two years later (1605) a permanent French settlement, the 
first in America, was made at Port Royal, in Nova Scotia. 
Of this settlement, one of De Monts's associates, Prontrin- 
court, was a founder. Another associate, Samuel de Cham- 



i6o8] FRENCH EXPLORERS 27 

plain, in 1608, began a settlement at Quebec. This was 
the beginning of Canada. Champlain was a type of man 
wholly different from previous, and nearly all later, explor- 
ers in America. He may be called the first scientific 
explorer of the New World. He mapped his course and 
recorded his observations so well that his journal would 
now serve as a guide-book through the regions he visited. 
He was interested in the physical features and in the plants 
and animals of the country, and made drawings of much 
that he saw. The lake that bears his name was his dis- 
covery ; so too were Lake Ontario and Lake Huron, and 
many great streams. On foot he explored most of the 
country from the Kennebec River to the Straits of Macki- 
naw. He spent twenty-seven years in Canada, and saw it 
become the home of several flourishing French settlements. 
He cultivated the friendship of the Indians, and had great 
influence over them. During his time, the French entered 
into friendly relations with the great tribes of the Northwest 
and secured the monopoly of the fur trade. Most of these 
tribes became hunters for the French, and brought vast 
quantities of furs to Quebec and Montreal. 

Among all these tribes the Jesuit Fathers sought to 
establish missions. They penetrated the Indian towns, 
lived with the savages, bore unparalleled hardships, minis- 
tered to the wretched, instilled the teachings of Christianity 
into the minds of any who would give them a hearing, and 
thought no danger or sacrifice great enough to deter them 
from carrying on their work. The Indian world was their 
parish. Wherever they went they made keen observation 
of all they saw, and reported to their superior in France in 
a remarkable series of letters called the Jesuit Relations. 
They carefully mapped the scenes of their labors; they 
journeyed all over the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the 
Mississippi ; they discovered all the important lakes and 
tributary streams of the great valley. Thus it came about 
that New France was the best mapped portion of the New 
World. Although the fathers served so faithfully, most of 
them met violent deaths at the hands of the savages whom 
they had come to help. 

Unwittingly, Champlain had offended a foe so powerful 



28 FRENCH COLONIZATION [1609 

that the enmity he stirred up proved at last one of the chief 
causes of the overthrow of New France. For centuries 
before his coming, a feud had raged between two great 
divisions of the Indian tribes — the Algonquins, who lived 
principally north of the Great Lakes, and the Iroquois, also 
called the Five Nations, who lived south of them, and 
whose cruel hand was felt as far south as Florida and as far 
west as the Platte River, At the time of Champlain's 
arrival, the Algonquins were the less formidable, although 
a thoroughly organized league, after the manner of Indian 
organization. Champlain made peace with them when he 
found the St. Lawrence, and entering into offensive and 
defensive alliance, was welcomed as a powerful and timely 
ally. Ignorant of the ancient feud, and also of the power 
of the Five Nations, he readily joined in an expedition 
against them, his Algonquin allies trusting that with the 
help of his terrible firearms they might at last annihilate 
their foes. Near Ticonderoga, in 1609, Champlain met 
and defeated the Five Nations. Here was the home of the 
terrible Mohawks, but they fled at the sound and the de- 
struction made by the French guns. From this time the 
Five Nations hated the French as they hated their more 
ancient foes. 

As matters turned out a century and a half later, Cham- 
plain's defeat of the Mohawks was one of the important 
events in American history. 

While he was defeating them at Ticonderoga, the 
English were settling Jamestown and the Dutch were 
laying the foundations of New Amsterdam, later to become 
an English town. As the English extended their colonies 
and were brought in contact with the Indians, they discov- 
ered that the whole country east of the Mississippi was 
under the control of the Five Nations, and furthermore, 
that these were foes of the French. An alliance soon fol- 
lowed. During the whole history of New France, cover- 
ing a century and a half (1603- 1763), the Five Nations 
continued to be implacable enemies of the French, and 
were a barrier preventing the extension of New France 
over New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. But 
down the Mississippi Valley the French passed without 



1759] CHAMPLAIN 29 

serious hindrance, save from the Spanish whom they met 
in what are now Missouri and Louisiana. 

The portion of the United States once in New France 
comprises the region from the Alleghany Mountains to the 
Missouri River and from the Lake of the Woods to the Gulf 
of Mexico, or nearly one fourth of the Union. Within this 
area, there remain many evidences of French exploration, 
but few of their occupation. French names of rivers, lakes, 
and valleys, and a few towns survive. Along the Ohio they 
planted plates of pewter, with suitable inscriptions, claiming 
the country. Their headquarters were at Quebec and Mon- 
treal, but their forts were scattered over the Mississippi 
Valley at strategic points. They were bound to become 
one of the chief disputants for the control of America. 
Evidence of their once powerful ascendency is abundant in 
Louisiana, as attested there by land titles, laws, and to 
some extent by the manners, customs, and language of the 
people. When the French had explored Louisiana, they 
attempted to hold it as a part of New France. This brought 
on the French and Indian war (1756-63). But France and 
England w^re really at war for America from 1608 till the 
fall of Quebec, in 1759. 



CHAPTER V 

VIRGINIA 

1497-1765 

Cabot's discovery of North America, in 1497, gave the 
English a claim to the continent, but they made no effort 
to explore or colonize it for over eighty years; a delay due 
to the prolonged wars in which England was engaged. The 
English were fighting for nationality, and all Europe was 
involved in the conflict. In 1567, the Netherlands revolted 
from Spain, and the Dutch fought forty years before win- 
ning their independence. Queen Elizabeth became their 
ally, and sent vast sums of money and many troops to their 
aid. This involved England in war with Spain. In 1588, 
Philip II. sent the Armada to attack England — the largest 
fleet Europe had yet seen, one hundred and thirty-two 
ships, armed with over three thousand cannon. But the 
"Invincible Armada" no sooner entered the English Chan- 
nel than a multitude of disasters befell it. It was outma- 
neuvered by the English fleet and ship after ship destroyed. 
A fearful storm drove a great part of it on the rocks of the 
North Sea coast. Only a few ships escaped. England was 
out of danger; her naval power was established, and she 
now turned her attention to America. Holland also was 
free to participate in the colonization of America. 

After 1588 the power of Spain in North America rapidly 
declined, and the power of England there rapidly increased. 
Hitherto, all that Englishmen had done in America was to 
intercept a Spanish galleon from Mexico, or occasionally to 
seize a cargo of African slaves on its way to Havana. In 
this questionable business Sir John Hawkins had won 
wealth and fame. He was a favorite with Elizabeth. With 
the power of Spain broken in Europe, the northern nations, 
especially the English and Dutch, turned freely to partici- 
pate in the large opportunities of the New World. They 

30 



1576, 1587] RALEIGH 31 

no longer felt the restrictive authority of the Pope's division 
of America between Spain and Portugal. From the long 
religious wars which had distracted Europe, England and 
Holland emerged as great Protestant countries. They now 
took an interest in colonizing America, all of which was 
already included in New Spain and New France. 

Raleigh was the first Englishman to propose establish- 
ing a colony in America. His fame was already great; his 
ambition was greater. He was one of a group of brave 
Englishmen who carried the English flag to the New 
World. Frobisher, in 1576, had sought a northwest pas- 
sage to Asia, carrying out a favorite idea of Columbus; but 
he brought back only a quantity of worthless minerals and 
some geographical knowledge, which his name still suggests 
on the map. John Davis, in 1587, as he was seeking a 
similar passage, discovered the strait that bears his name. 
A year after Frobisher, Sir Francis Drake, half explorer, 
half pirate, while following the seas for Spanish galleons, 
passed through Magellan's Straits and sailed up the Pacific 
coast as far as Oregon. For a time he remained in San 
Francisco Bay, and to the northwest country he gave the 
name New Albion ; that is, New England. It was already 
known as New Spain. After two years spent in piracy and 
adventure, he returned to England by the way of the Cape 
of Good Hope, being the first Englishman and the second 
European to circumnavigate the globe. Because of his 
voyage, England laid claim to the Pacific coast of North 
America, just as by Cabot's voyage she laid claim to the 
Atlantic coast. If this claim could be defended. North 
y^erica would become New England. But New Spain 
and New France had settlements and strong defenders. 
Evidently, North America was fated to become the scene 
of a mighty struggle between England, France, and Spain. 
The Indians were not supposed to have rights which Euro- 
peans were bound to respect. 

At this time Raleigh planned a colony, and set about 
planting it, as was then thought, in the wisest way. In 
1584 he sent an exploring expedition to bring back reports 
of the country, and three years later a small colony was 
settled on Roanoke Island, off North Carolina. It was an 



32 VIRGINIA [1587 

unfavorable time. The Armada was coming, and all Eng- 
land was absorbed in repelling it. Foremost of England's 
defenders was Raleigh, and he quite forgot his American 
colony. A few English cruisers visited it, and one, it is 
said, brought back to England little Virginia Dare, the first 
white child who was born in the colony, on the i8th of 
August, 1587. When Elizabeth granted Raleigh a charter, 
he named English America Virginia in her honor. The 
little girl brought back home had been given the name of 
the colony. She appears to have been all that ever came 
back, for in some way that has never been explained the 
colony perished and left no mark. But Raleigh bravely 
resumed his plans. After expending about a million dol- 
lars on his venture, he became convinced that the undertak- 
ing was too great for private enterprise, and assigned all 
his interests in Virginia to a joint-stock company composed 
chiefly of London merchants. Though Raleigh failed to 
plant a colony himself, he had awakened the English people 
to the idea. From this time till the settlement of Georgia, 
in 1732, American colonization was a subject more or less 
familiar to the English people. Raleigh is remembered as 
the pioneer of English colonizers. In 1792, the state of 
North Carolina gave its capital his name. 

Like Columbus nearly a century before, Raleigh had 
pointed the way, and the prospect of wealth stimulated 
the multitude to follow. James L succeeded Elizabeth. 
Though he persecuted Raleigh and ordered his execution, 
he took a selfish interest in American colonization. Might 
not gold mines exist in Virginia as rich as those in Mexico 
and Peru? The king therefore granted a charter to a con%- 
pany of gentlemen and merchants in London and Plymouth; 
two companies under one charter and one management. 
No man knew Virginia well enough to describe it accu- 
rately, but the charter was made to divide the country by 
metes and bounds between the companies. The king's 
scheme to keep the peace between them was novel. To the 
London company he gave the land from Cape Fear to the 
mouth of the Potomac River; to the Plymouth company, 
the land from Long Island to Nova Scotia, and to each 
company the country inland for a hundred miles. The 



i6o6] THE KING'S CHARTER 33 

strip from the Potomac to Long Island should be neutral 
soil, open to both companies, but neither should settle 
within a hundred miles of the other. Thus the charter 
rudely set out three great belts across the continent, the 
beginning, as events finally proved, of three zones of states, 
the Northern, the Middle, and the Southern. 

The first English charter for an American colonizing 
company contained several provisions which largely deter- 
mined the course of ideas and events in this country. 
Neither Spain nor France had given such charters. They 
had commissioned various people to act in a military 
capacity in the New World, New Spain and New France 
were military dependencies, and their several governors 
reported, like army ofificials, to their superiors at home. 
King James's charter was based on an entirely different 
idea. Whoever migrated to America was to enjoy there 
all the ancient and undoubted rights of Englishmen in 
England. This made the English colonists English citi- 
zens. The charter was a compact signed by the king, 
attested by the great seal of England, that the council of 
the colony should be appointed by the king, that he should 
be paid one-fifth of all gold and silver ore found, and spe- 
cifically, that one of the main objects of the enterprise was 
the conversion of the Indians to Christianity, 

The most important provision in the charter was the 
guarantee of the civil rights of the colonists. Unlike the set- 
tlements in New Spain and New France, these in Virginia 
were to be civil, not military, in character. The govern- 
ments of France and Spain were despotic. The government 
of England was representative. Hence the English colo- 
nists naturally claimed the right to participate in some degree 
in the control of their own affairs. Originally this was not 
intended, Raleigh hoped to settle vast landed estates in 
America, and there to collect his rents as he was accus- 
tomed to collect them on his English estates. He was to 
make what laws he pleased for his colony. The London 
and Plymouth companies had the same notion, and went 
into the enterprise as a speculation. Nothing was said in 
the charter of 1606 of the right of the prospective colonists 
to participate in the government. But we must remember 



34 VIRGINIA [1609 

that we are now dealing with Englishmen accustomed to 
many ancient rights and privileges. We shall see how these 
were interpreted in Virginia and in later colonies. 

Royal patronage and public interest promised well for 
the two companies. Each fitted out an expedition, that 
of the London company consisting of thirty-nine sailors, 
fifty-three mechanics and tradesmen, and eighty-two who 
styled themselves gentlemen. There was not a farmer 
among them. They expected to pick up gold freely in the 
new Eldorado. None intended to make America his home. 
They entered a great river which they named after the king. 
They landed in May and began their adventures. The 
more industrious built some huts, and the place was called 
Jamestown. In less than four months half the company 
was dead, mostly from exposure and starvation. James- 
town was malarial. By September, nearly all the survivors 
were down with the fever, and the destruction of the colony 
seemed imminent. The Indians were already hostile. 
Among the adventurers was John Smith, who had seen 
much of the world and had been a captain in the British 
army in the Netherlands. On the way to Virginia the 
"gentlemen" of the company had ignored him, but now, 
in the hour of distress, all turned to him for counsel. 
While the men had been hunting for gold, or loitering 
among the Indians, Smith had explored the country, had 
made a map of it, had aided in the construction of a fort, 
and had urged industry upon all. 

He now quickly restored order and put the colony in a 
state of defense. While exploring the country, he had 
many adventures, and some of these he printed in a famous 
book about Virginia. His most remarkable experiences 
seem to have happened while he was alone with the Indians. 
He says that he was captured while exploring one of the 
branches of the James, and taken to the wigwam of Pow- 
hatan, chief of a powerful tribe. After some discussion of 
his fate, the Indian ordered his brains knocked out. Sud- 
denly the chieftain's daughter, Pocahontas, sprang forward, 
threw her arms about the prisoner, pleaded with her father 
for his life, and saved him. Whether this is true or not, 
Smith had many adventures, as any one may read in his 



i6io] JOHN SMITH 35 

book. His maps are so accurate and his account of Virginia 
so exhaustive, that most of his stories of personal adventure 
have passed current as true. Smith's personal history takes 
its chief interest from Pocahontas, thus suddenly intro- 
duced. She proved a true friend to the colony, supplying 
it with corn at a critical time. Later she became the wife 
of one of the colonists, John Rolfe, visited England, and 
was received at court as an Indian princess. Several dis- 
tinguished families of Virginia claim descent from her. 
Smith found it easier to outwit the Indians and to map the 
country than to manage the colony. One morning a yel- 
lowish substance was discovered in the bed of the river. 
It was pronounced gold, and the little colony at once went 
mad over the discovery. Smith protested that it was not 
gold, but he was laughed to scorn. A ship was quickly 
loaded with the ore and sped away to England, where the 
shining earth was at once recognized as an ore of iron com- 
monly called "fool's gold." While the Virginians were 
digging fool's gold, Champlain was exploring the Mohawk 
Valley and Lake Ontario. 

About this time Smith was chosen president of the 
council, but his vigorous measures were unpopular. Having 
met with a serious accident, he returned to England for 
medical treatment. The company continued sending over 
ship-loads of colonists, but they did not bring prosperity. 
After Smith's retirement, the colony speedily came to want. 
Over four hundred persons died within six months. The 
few who remained, about sixty in number, looked daily 
for a ship that would take them home. One came, bringing 
colonists and supplies, but on learning the condition of 
affairs the captain took the survivors on board and turned 
the prow of the ship toward England. By a curious acci- 
dent, the ship met Lord Delaware with a fleet coming up the 
river, and bringing colonists, cattle, supplies of all kinds, and 
a new charter creating him governor of Virginia. Thus in 
1610 the colony was preserved, just as it was about to be 
abandoned. Delaware was a soldier and a stern man, and he 
was rapidly bringing the colony into a prosperous condition, 
when ill health compelled him to return to England. He 
came in June, 16 10, and returned in the following March. 



36 VIRGINIA [1619 

It was during these few months that the fate of the 
colony was settled. Its prosperity began. A sterner soldier, 
Sir Thomas Dale, succeeded him, and ruled the colony for 
five years with military discipline. Many of the colonists 
were of the criminal class, for the company was not particu- 
lar about its immigrants. Dale broke up the communal 
system, and gave every man land to cultivate as his own. 
As every man was now a land-owner, he began to express 
his opinions with freedom. Dale found tobacco in cultiva- 
tion, and recognized the value of the plant to the colony. 
It is said that John Rolfe, in 1612, was the first to cultivate 
the wild plant. Soon tobacco culture was the chief occu- 
pation of the people. Even the streets of Jamestown were 
planted. The Virginians discovered that they could raise 
something that would sell in England, for the habit of smok- 
ing, said to have been introduced by Raleigh, had spread 
so rapidly that tobacco was in great demand. 

The new charter widely extended the colony. Instead 
of a grant a hundred miles square, the company now was 
given the region two hundred miles north and south from 
Old Point Comfort, and from sea to sea. This became the 
basis, later, of Virginia's claim to the Northwest. But the 
new charter also contained other important provisions which 
affected the government of the people and the future of 
America. 

The colonists were empowered to choose delegates to 
a general assembly — two from each borough. On the 
30th of July, 1619, the delegates met in the church at 
Jamestown and organized the Virginia House of Burgesses — 
the first representative assembly in the New World. This 
was an event of greatest importance, for the people could 
now make their own laws. The present legislature of Vir- 
ginia is successor to this "Little Parliament," by an 
unbroken line of assemblies. The title House of Burgesses 
continued until 1830. Of course, if the first English colony 
had an assembly, all later ones would demand one. The 
first act of this assembly was to repair the church. This 
meant a tax and an appropriation. Soon followed laws 
fixing the prices of tobacco and other commodities; also 
fixing wages, penalties for various offenses, and the quali- 



1619] THE NEW CHARTER 37 

fications for voting. These laws, by the terms of the new 
charter, were to be in force unless disapproved by the crown. 
The house could make any laws "not contrary to the laws 
of England." This liberal charter was exacted from the 
company by the condition of the colony. Its affairs had 
gone so badly that immigrants refused to come, and those 
in Virginia threatened to return to England. The company 
therefore gave the people a voice in public affairs. Popular 
government was thus the fruit of industrial conditions. 

At this time slavery in some form prevailed in every 
country in the world. Columbus had enslaved the natives 
as soon as he could catch them, and African slavery had 
long been a recognized part of the institutions of New 
Spain. Cargoes of slaves in Dutch and Portuguese trading 
ships were continually arriving at Havana. Hearing of a 
new colony in Virginia, a Dutch slaver, eager for a good 
market, appeared in the James River in August, 1619. 
Twenty slaves were sold — the small beginning of an evil 
which rapidly spread over the English colonies, became an 
established American institution, and for years made the 
United States a slave-holding republic. It seems strange 
that at the very time representative government was estab- 
lished in the colonies slavery should have been established 
also. Few then thought slavery wrong, or that the slave 
had any more rights than any other property. The world 
was a great slave-holder throughout the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, and during the greater part of the 
nineteenth. Nor were negroes the only slaves in Virginia 
or in the other colonies. On account of the crowded con- 
dition of English jails, many convicts were transported to 
America and sold for a term of years as "indentured ser- 
vants." White slaves and black worked side by side in the 
tobacco fields. Sometimes the whites, on becoming free, 
acquired property and social position in the colony. Many 
led a miserable existence, and their descendants were called 
"poor whites." White slavery ceased about 1700. Till 
that time negro slavery was held in check, because white 
slaves were often the cheaper. But negro slaves were pre- 
ferred, and at the close of the seventeenth century there 
were upward of three thousand of them in Virginia. 



38 VIRGINIA [1624, 1642 

King James was greatly incensed when he discovered 
that the company had given the Virginians a charter per- 
mitting a popular assembly. He brought many accusations 
against the company, and determined to get rid of the char- 
ter. This was not easy, because many wealthy merchants 
and powerful noblemen had become members of the com- 
pany under the new charter. But in 1624 subservient 
judges decided in favor of the king, declared that the colony 
had been mismanaged, and annulled the charter. The king 
then took the place of the company and assumed control 
of Virginia. He began writing an elaborate code of laws 
for the colony, but died in the midst of his work. Though 
Virginia was a charter colony only fifteen years, this was 
long enough for popular government to get a lawful and 
vigorous start. The local Virginia council, under the first 
charter, was appointed by the directors of the company in 
London. The chief oflficer of the local council was elected 
by its members, and styled president; that is, chairman. 
Two hundred and eighty years later, the most famous Vir- 
ginian, George Washington, was chosen chairman of the 
convention in Philadelphia that framed the Constitution of 
the United States. By that instrument our chief executive 
is styled the president. Two years later, Washington was 
chosen to the office. Virginia thus furnished the original 
title of our highest office, and long afterward the first of 
our presidents. The title president was taken up by the 
people in other colonies, and given by some to the governors, 
by others to the chairmen of their assemblies. 

The new king disliked popular government in any form. 
He wished to rule without Parliament or House of Bur- 
gesses. Sir John Harvey, his first governor for Virginia, 
in 1629, violated the rights of the people so seriously that 
the king was compelled to recall him. In 1642 he sent over 
Sir William Berkeley, a very able man, popular but severe. 
He greatly improved the manners of the colony, but steadily 
repressed popular government as much as he could. "I 
thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses" 
(in Virginia), said he, "and I hope we shall not have them 
these hundred years. ' ' He knew that schools and a free press 
are the life of free institutions. He did not want the Vir- 



1649] SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY 39 

ginians to do their own thinking. But h'ke his master, 
King Charles I., he met with difficulties. Civil war broke 
out in England, and Charles was forced to summon a Parlia- 
ment, which, because it was not dissolved during twenty 
years, is known as the "Long Parliament." For six years 
king and Parliament were at war. In 1649, after an excit- 
ing trial, the king was convicted of high treason and exe 
cuted. The commonwealth was established, and Oliver 
Cromwell became lord protector. These changes greatly 
affected English colonial affairs. 

For eleven years the colony practically controlled its 
own affairs. The House of Burgesses was supreme, and 
gained an ascendency which it never lost. Though England 
was a commonwealth only eleven years, this was long 
enough for popular government to become firmly estab- 
lished in the colony. During this time the king's friends, 
the cavaliers, in England were out of favor and power. 
Many who had fought for Charles preferred to immigrate to 
America rather than to live under Cromwell and the Puri- 
tans. They came to Virginia. Among them were the 
ancestors of Washington, Lee, and some other leaders of 
the American Revolution. Among the members of the 
first House of Burgesses was a Jefferson. A century and 
a half later, Thomas Jefferson, his descendant, wrote the 
Declaration of Independence. The cavaliers who came to 
Virginia were not admirers of popular government. They 
were of the king's party in the colony. But as time passed, 
their descendants joined with those of the burgesses in 
defense of colonial rights. The cavalier influence in Vir- 
ginia gained control of the House of Burgesses about the 
time the commonwealth came to an end. 

With the return of Charles II., who at one time had 
been invited by the cavaliers of Virginia to set up his throne 
there, and had seriously thought of accepting the invita- 
tion, the House of Burgesses elected Berkeley governor, 
largely to please the king. Berkeley had not changed. 
He was hostile to the house, and for fourteen years man- 
aged to get along without it, by adjourning it every year 
as soon as it convened. In vain did the people protest, for 
the royal governor had power to adjourn the assembly at 



40 VIR(;iNIA [1676 

his pleasure. A century later, Jefferson in the Declaration 
of Independence mentioned the abuse of the power to pro- 
rogue the legislature as one of the causes of the Revolution. 
When the colonies became states, their constitutions forbade 
the governor to adjourn the assembly, and the provision is 
found in every state constitution to-day. Suddenly Charles 
surprised the Virginians by giving them and their country 
to two of his favorites, Lord Arlington and Lord Culpepper, 
The Virginians were not consulted. The grant was for 
thirty-one years. At this time the colony had a population 
of forty thousand. After all, the House of Burgesses seemed 
to be of little account. At this critical moment an Indian 
war broke out, and the frontier was ravaged, but Berkeley 
would do nothing. He feared to call out the militia lest it 
might turn against him for his high-handed acts. Driven 
to self-defense, the people volunteered, organized the militia, 
and chose Nathaniel Bacon to lead them. He dispersed 
the Indians, but while fighting for the colony was declared 
a rebel by Berkeley. The wrath of the people now broke 
out; the governor withdrew his proclamation, but continued 
hostile to Bacon and his friends. Bacon was elected to the 
assembly, and there aided in preparing a memorial to the 
king setting .forth the governor's tyranny. The savages 
were again attacking the settlements, and Bacon again led 
in a campaign against them. Civil war broke out, James- 
town was burned, the people willingly setting fire to their 
own buildings rather than submit to Berkeley's misrule. 
Suddenly Bacon died of fever, and affairs quieted down, but 
not before the governor had hanged above twenty people 
for treason. His act was disapproved by the king; he was 
recalled and sternly reprimanded for his folly and cruelty. 
The royal disfavor was a fatal blow to Berkeley, who died 
soon after. The Virginians attributed the whole trouble 
to the governor's treatment of the House of Burgesses. 
They insisted that the house had fought for their rights and 
liberties. Bacon was the first Englishman in America to 
take arms for the ancient and undoubted rights of the people 
of the colony. His death, in 1676, was remembered as 
that of a martyr for liberty. Other causes contributing to 
Bacon's rebellion were the low price of tobacco; the scar- 



1679] NATHANIEL BACON 41 

city of money in the colony; the excessive prices charged 
by Engh'sh merchants for their goods under the monopoly 
which the trade laws of Parliament established, and above 
all the prorogation of the assembly and the high poll taxes 
which the House of Burgesses felt obliged to levy in order 
to meet the obligations which the king's transfer of the 
colony to Arlington and Culpepper involved. Bacon's 
rebellion subsided, and the more quickly under the stern 
hand of the colonial governor, but memories of it lingered 
among the people, fell like seeds on republican soil, and 
sprang up among the elemental ideas of liberty in the Old 
Dominion. When, just a hundred years after the outbreak 
of the rebellion, the Declaration of Independence, written 
by a Virginian, was given to the world, the seeds sown in 
Bacon's struggle had blossomed, and the fruit was to mature 
soon after in the constitutions of government which the 
American people framed and adopted. 

The weary century was filled with political lessons, not 
only for the Virginians, but for the people of the other colo- 
nies as well; and first came the hard experiences under the 
navigation acts which began to bear down the Americans 
in 1676. Much of the history of the next hundred years 
is of the king's attempts to execute these acts in the colo- 
nies. Here were involved questions of the power of the 
assemblies and of the prerogative of the crown. Governor 
Berkeley's hard treatment of the Baconian party trans- 
formed many of its opponents into sympathizers. In the 
resolution of political and social forces in Virginia, which 
came more or less slowly after the rebellion had been stamped 
out, it was discovered that the elements of the struggle had 
not perished. The House of Burgesses still stood for one 
idea, one political system, and the royal governor for 
another. Even the removal and recall of Berkeley, in 1679, 
did not bring permanent harmony. Berkeley's successors, 
among whom now and then was one who made Virginia his 
iiome, looked upon the province as a means of founding or 
mending their fortunes. Their sole thought was to put 
money in their purses. Ceaseless contentions with the 
assemblies followed. The governor was ever appealing to 
the king; the assemblies ever were relying on the firm 



42 VIRGINIA [1689 

republican support of the electors. Arlington and Cul- 
pepper played at governorship, and lost the game. 

The navigation acts speedily brought a train of disasters 
upon the colony. They cut ofi its trade with the whole 
world, excepting England. One effect, in 1680, was an 
overproduction of tobacco and a glut in the market. The 
navigation laws forbade opening up a new outlet, and the 
assembly was forced to attempt the impossible — to regulate 
prices, and the areas which from time to time should be 
planted to tobacco. The result was the Plantcutters' Riot 
of 1681-82, which overspread the lower plantations. The 
young tobacco plants were destroyed by the mob, till the 
militia having been called out and several plantcutters 
hanged, the excitement subsided. No one seems to have 
suggested the repeal of the navigation act, and the conse- 
quent extension of the market. 

The assembly stoutly maintained its rights to levy taxes, 
and the governors breathed no objection aloud so long as 
the appropriations included a fat salary for themselves. 
Even a small one seemed satisfactory to the notorious Lord 
Howard of Effingham, who decided to remain in England, 
draw his salary as governor, and rule Virginia through a 
deputy, choosing Francis Nicholson, lately of New York, 
who departed when the Andros government came abruptly 
to an end under Jacob Leisler. Nicholson came, and a 
merry time he had in his attempt to rule the Virginians. 
It was at the beginning of his administration, in 1689, that 
James Blair, a Scotch clergyman, who had been appointed 
to the charge of the church in Virginia, arrived. He had 
powers akin to those of a bishop, and exercised judicial 
functions in ecclesiastical cases. Two years after his com- 
ing he entered upon the noble work of founding a college, 
and after two years' labor in the colony and in England, 
raised a sufficient sum to start the institution in 1693, called 
in its charter William and Mary College. It was located 
at Williamsburg, a town founded in the year of the founding 
of the college. Between Nicholson and Blair there raged 
a conflict of principles and practices which could not be 
harmonized. Nicholson was recalled in 1705. 

The first commencement was held in 1700, fifty-seven 



i7io] THE COLLEGE 43 

years before the first held in any other college south of New 
England.* William and Mary speedily became the intel- 
lectual center of the South. It was the first college in 
America that assumed the methods and ways of a modern 
university: instruction by lectures, the elective system of 
studies, the teaching of history and political science by a 
special professor, and the adoption of a non-sectarian policy. 
Among its famed professors, during the years just before 
the American Revolution, was George Wythe, who became 
chancellor of Virginia. He was the first professor of muni- 
cipal law in America, but he is better known as one of that 
incomparable body of men who framed the Constitution of 
the United States at Philadelphia in 1787. Among those 
who read law with him were Jefferson and Madison, John 
Marshall and Henry Clay. William and Mary College 
trained may young men who attained great eminence — 
among them Jefferson, Marshall, James Monroe, and John 
Tyler. 

Before Francis Nicholson vanishes from the scene, let 
us remember that he was one of the first men to plan a 
union of all the English colonies, in 1689. It was on a 
military basis, and was solely to protect them against the 
power of New France. William HI. thought so highly of 
it that he urged its adoption ; but the time for American 
union had not yet come. 

In 17 10 a new governor arrived in Virginia, a man of a 
different type from any of his predecessors — Alexander 
Spotswood. Though differing frequently with the assem- 
bly, his intercourse with that republican body was more 
harmonious than the colony had ever known to exist between 
the executive and the legislative. He took a great interest 
in the material progress of Virginia, and especially the 
development of its resources. He encouraged the planting 
of vineyards, the introduction of fruits, and the establishing 
of iron furnaces. No other royal governor in America 
equaled him in such undertakings. Had his industrial 

*The college in Philadelphia, afterward (1779) named the Univer- 
sity of the State of Pennsylvania, and in 1791 the University of Penn- 
sylvania. See Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania, Washington, 
Government Printing Office, 1893. 



44 VIRGINIA [1753 

sagacity been shared by other governors, and especially by 
the crown and the ministry, the Revolution of 1776 would 
have been long delayed. But the spirit of the navigation 
acts was deadening to all such efforts. 

Virginia lay at a safe distance from New France; indeed, 
the middle colonies and New England were her ramparts. 
Her people were thus exempted from the terrible strain 
which weighed upon their brethren farther north. The 
Virginia mind ripened all these years, and fruited in that 
wonderful body of men who led the American Revolution. 
The continental aspects of American life were clear to Jef- 
ferson and Washington and their associates. The philoso- 
pher of the Revolution was a Virginian, as one would 
expect from the history of America. Jefferson personified 
a mental type rare in the New World as in the Old. But 
such a man as he could not have been produced outside of 
Virginia. If we would trace the history of the American 
mind from the time of the settlement at Jamestown, 1607, 
to the time of the inauguration of our present national 
government, 1789, we need not go outside Virginia. Its 
development was normal, in so far as that of any colony 
could be under English law during that time in the world's 
history. The New England mind may have been theologi- 
cally more subtle, but it was no more robust or cosmo- 
politan. The middle colonies were amidst too fierce an 
international turmoil, the conflict between France and 
England for the possession of the continent, to permit the 
growth of that philosophic calm which distinguishes Jeffer- 
son as an exponent of American political thought. 

With the outbreak of the final struggle between England 
and France, in 1753, Virginia, like her colonial neighbors, 
rises to new importance and emerges from provincialism. 
Henceforth her local contests are insignificant, and she is 
swept into the grand current of continental events. The 
century since Bacon's rebellion was swiftly closing, and 
republican ideas were springing up like armed men. We 
must turn from the tide-water plains and the rich valleys 
of the Old Dominion, and follow her sons into that greater 
world in which they were to play the leading part in the 
founding of a new nation. 



1763] WASHINGTON AND HENRY 45 

The claims of Virginia and New France conflicted. 
Both claimed the Ohio Valley. In 1749 a great English 
company was formed, called the Ohio Company, which 
obtained a grant of half a million acres on the Ohio River. 
It lay within the French claim. This grant was one of the 
causes that precipitated the French and Indian war. Hear- 
ing that the French had built a fort within the Ohio grant, 
Governor Robert Dinwiddle sent George Washington, then 
just of age and adjutant-general of the militia of the colony, 
to investigate the facts. This famous winter journey was 
the first act in the great struggle between England and 
France for the ownership of North America. 

Tobacco was the currency of the colony and the stand- 
ard of values. In 1755, the legislature fixed the price of 
tobacco at twopence a pound, but on account of scarcity 
it rose to sixpence, but as all debts were lawfully payable 
by the lower standard, debtors were enabled to escape peiy- 
ing two-thirds of their debts. The rating of tobacco was 
changed again by the legislature in 1738. Now as the 
clergymen of the established church in Virginia were paid 
in tobacco, they suddenly found themselves deprived of a 
large portion of their income. At last the whole question 
came up, in a test case, before the court of Hanover County. 
The plaintiffs were the clergy. The defendants, too poor 
to employ famous counsel, took to their aid an unknown 
man, just admitted to the bar after six months' study. 
His name was Patrick Henry. The case was tried in No- 
vember, 1763. Never was judge or jury more astonished 
than by this young lawyer, who told them that the law 
which gave tithes was bad. It was made by king and 
Parliament, and he said made the Virginians slaves to an 
outside power; Virginia ought to manage her own affairs. 
Henry said a great deal more, and won his case, not because 
he was on the side of the law, for he was not, but because 
he spoke the conviction of the majority of the people of 
Virginia. From this hour he was their idol. 

When the French and Indian war was over, and Parlia- 
ment prepared to tax America, Henry was the first in Vir- 
ginia to give voice to the opinion of the majority of the 
people. Everybody has heard of his famous introduction 



46 VIRGINIA [1765 

to the speech with which he presented his "Declaration of 
Rights" to the House of Burgesses in May, 1765: "Cjesar 
had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell; and George 
III. — " Here he was interrupted by cries of "Treason! 
treason!" "May profit by their example," he calmly con- 
cluded. From the passage of these resolutions, Virginia 
divided with Massachusetts the early leadership in the cause 
of American independence. 



CHAPTER VI 

NEW YORK 
1610-1689 

At the time of the settlement of Jamestown, the Dutch 
were rivals of the English in the carrying trade, and there- 
fore specially desirous of finding a northwest route to Asia. 
They had already secured a foothold in the East Indies. 
In 1609 a great commercial organization, known as the 
Dutch East India Company, equipped an expedition under 
Henry Hudson, an Englishman, who they hoped would find 
the northwest passage. In search of this, he explored the 
great river that bears his name as far as the site of Albany ; 
but the lessening stream convinced him that he could not 
reach Asia that way. Passing down the coast, he entered 
Delaware Bay, which he explored, but with the same con- 
clusion. His voyage was considered by the company to 
give them a title to the country, and the new region was 
called New Netherland. It lay within the domain of the 
Plymouth Company. Hudson's report was highly favor- 
able, and a settlement was at once planned. 

Unlike the London Company, the East India did not 
plan to colonize any part of America. It wished only to 
establish trading-posts and get control of the fur trade. 
A few Dutch traders ventured to come over in 16 10, and 
made their headquarters in their ships; but in 1614 they 
built some huts at the lower point of Manhattan Island, and 
constructed a rude fort just south of the site of Albany. 
This they called Fort Nassau, after the stadtholder of 
Holland. Probably they were ignorant at the time of the 
strategic importance of the fort, standing as it did at the 
eastern entrance to the domains of the Five Nations — the 
powerful league which Champlain had so unwittingly 
offended five years before. It stood, too, at the head of 
navigation on the Hudson and at the point where the Indian 

47 



48 NEW YORK [1614 

trails converged from the north, the east, the south, and 
the west. Whoever controlled this point would be master 
of the country from the Great Lakes and the Ohio to the 
Atlantic. 

The profits on the furs from Fort Nassau caused a stir 
among the merchants of Amsterdam. A company was 
quickly formed, and secured a charter in 16 14 which gave 
exclusive trading privileges in New Netherland. The profits 
were enormous ; but after seven years the Dutch government 
granted a charter to a new company, called the Dutch West 
India Company, empowering it also to colonize the country. 
The new company succeeded to all the rights of the old one. 

Colonization began in 1623, when some families, chiefly 
Walloons, arrived at Manhattan. Most of them went to 
Fort Nassau, and some passing beyond built Fort Orange, 
thus beginning the settlement which later was named Albany 
by the English. The new settlers on Manhattan were 
Protestants, and came to stay. They found a few log huts 
and built others. They called the place New Amsterdam, 
and it soon wore an air of thrift and prosperity. Before it 
lay a safe and capacious harbor where all the ships of Hol- 
land could lie at anchor. Occasionally an English ship 
sought refuge within it. When New Amsterdam was three 
years old, the West India Company thought it time to insti- 
tute a government over New Netherland, and sent Peter 
Minuit as governor. A small Indian tribe, the Manhattans, 
owned the island. The governor bought it of them for sixty 
guilders, less than twenty-five dollars, and thus the Dutch 
secured a peaceful title. New Amsterdam now had thirty 
log houses and about one hundred and fifty inhabitants. 

Like the French and the English, the Dutch at this time 
were accustomed to the feudal system, and now made it the 
basis of the government of New Netherland. The West 
India Company longed to receive a large sum of money in 
rent for the land, which it granted in large holdings, called 
wycks, to wealthy men, patrons, or patroons as they were 
called. These were to pay a perpetual rent. In turn, the 
patroons should collect rents from their tenantry. Some 
estates were a thousand square miles in area, and usually 
had a frontage on the Hudson or on the sea. A patroon 



i6i4] DUTCH IDEALS 49 

settled as many tenants as he chose and made his own terms 
with tliem. He was supreme in authority over his own 
estate and its tenants; they were tried in his court; they 
ground their grain in his mill, and they could not leave his 
estate without his permission. All his rights and titles 
descended to his oldest son. The patroon agreed to»buy 
all his supplies from the West India Company, and his 
tenantry obtained theirs from him at his price. 

Of course this system forbade manufactures in New 
Netherland, but after all it did not differ much from the 
colonial system of the English, and did not differ essen- 
tially from that of the French. The seventeenth century 
was the age of monopolies, and these, as they often do, bore 
hardest on the poor and the laboring classes. But the sys- 
tem assured a profit to the Dutch company, and that was 
its main purpose. The attitude of the company to the 
people of New Netherland was exactly that of Europe to 
America till the independence of the United States. Is it 
strange that, after living under such a policy for a century 
and a half, the people of America should revolt against it? 
There was more to this Dutch policy. The colonists were 
required to pay a duty on all skins they exported. England 
later collected a duty on colonial exports, unless they were 
sent directly to England. Bacon's rebellion in Virginia 
was a protest against this tax on exported tobacco. 

Such is the character of the Dutch, that the feudal sys- 
tem worked better in New Netherland than anywhere else 
in America. The great estates along the Hudson, that 
highway to Europe, prospered. The patroon lived on his 
estate in a large brick mansion, amidst gardens laid out in 
the Dutch style. But in winter he went to his house in 
New Amsterdam. There comforts and many luxuries 
abounded. The shops excelled any to be found elsewhere 
in America. The ideas of life were quite unlike those held 
by the Puritans in New England, or even by the Virginians. 
New Netherland displayed more luxury than any other 
colony. The tenant took life, as it were, made to order. 
He did not discuss religion or politics or trade. He some- 
times ventured an opinion of the patroon. But he patiently 
paid his rent in kind, took the law as it was laid down to 



50 NEW YORK [1614 

him, and resumed his work. Negro slaves were sold in 
New Amsterdam almost from its beginning. They were 
domestic servants, and rarely field-hands as in Virginia. 

For books and reading, the patroon did not care, but 
he was not wholly an illiterate man. His arithmetic was 
all practical. He measured and weighed with accuracy, and 
if by chance he put his foot on the scales when he bought 
of an Indian, his conscience did not trouble him. The 
Indian was a shiftless wretch at best, he thought, but he 
lived in peace with him. The Mohawks and their brothers 
of the Five Nations got their guns and ammunition from 
the Dutch, and many a keg of powder and many a pound 
of lead received in barter at Fort Orange played havoc 
with the Hurons and the French in Canada, and with the 
English in Connecticut and Massachusetts. For sixty years 
New Netherland prospered as the Dutch wished; then came 
a brief contest, and the name disappeared from the map for- 
ever. But these were quiet years which tradition has filled 
with quaint characters and legends. Rip Van Winkle is more 
real to us than Captain John Smith or Miles Standish, 
though he owes his immortality to Washington Irving and 
Joseph Jefferson. 

By the terms of their charter, the West India Company 
received the Connecticut Valley, and they early began to 
explore it. Game of all kinds abounded; it was an un- 
touched wilderness and a tempting region to the Dutch fur 
traders. The Indians liked the Dutch better than the Eng- 
lish, for the Dutch willingly sold them guns, powder and 
ball, and in no wise interfered with them. Unlike the 
English, they did not attempt to govern the Indians, or to 
enslave them, or to seize their lands for nothing, or to con- 
vert them to Christianity. All the Dutch wanted of the 
Indians was more fur-skins. Whatever increased the sup- 
ply they willingly sold to the savages. The English, on 
the contrary, were ever seizing the Indians' land without 
compensation, and cared little for their furs. Thus it soon 
came about that the English began to suffer from Dutch 
guns in the hands of the savages, and the Puritans classed 
the Dutch and the Indians together as the most dangerous 
foes to New England. To the north, the French in Can- 



1633] NEW NETHERLAND 51 

ada had the same feeling toward the Dutch for selling the 
firearms that kept New France in constant terror. By 
1633 tne Dutch were pretty well acquainted with the Con- 
necticut Valley. Their trading-posts were scattered along 
the river, and where Hartford now stands they had built a 
strong fort. As was their custom, the Dutch bought the 
land on v/hich their fort was built, in this instance from 
the Pequots. When this powerful tribe rose, with fearful 
slaughter, against the English, not a Dutchman was in dan- 
ger. What few guns the Pequots had were of Dutch pattern. 
Though the Dutch knew nothing of popular education, 
they early made provision for church schools, as in the 
establishment of the School of the Collegiate Reformed 
church in New Amsterdam in 1633. This was two years 
before the founding of the Boston Latin School and three 
years before Harvard College. The Dutch cared almost 
solely for trade, and the West India Company sternly 
repressed any signs of discontent or liberty among the 
settlers. It held its governors to strict account. In spite 
of the urgent demands of the company, the Dutch gradu- 
ally withdrew from the Connecticut Valley and the English 
took possession. The New England Union of 1643 made 
it practically impossible for the Dutch to regain the valley. 
At this time New Amsterdam contained about a hundred 
houses and about five times as many people, who then, as 
now, were of various nations. English, Dutch, French, 
Spanish, and German might be heard in the city, and In- 
dians of various tribes frequented the place. Already the 
harbor was the most famed on the Atlantic coast. The 
West India Company's policy was shortsighted, for it denied 
rights in New Netherland which were commonly exercised 
in Holland. Therefore the better class of settlers would 
not come from Holland. The home government soon 
detected the obstacle in the way, and opened up the country 
on easy terms to all who chose to come. This meant the 
death of the patroon system. New Netherland now began 
to gain rapidly in population. The Indians parted with 
their land freely, and that along the Hudson from New 
Amsterdam to Fort Orange, and along the larger tributary 
streams, was mostly taken up in private ownership by 1647, 



52 NEW YORK [1664 

in which year Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor. 
By this time the settlers were earnestly demanding some 
form of representative government. With this demand the 
governor had no sympathy, but to keep the peace he allowed 
the land-owners to elect eighteen councilors, from whom 
he chose nine to act as an executive council. Through 
their efforts, the home government and the West India 
Company made concessions, though not very willingly. 
The export taxes were reduced, and the wealthier of the 
land-owners were permitted to elect magistrates. How- 
ever, Stuyvesant did not think the government or the com- 
pany in earnest, and took the choice of magistrates into his 
own hands. In like manner he repressed religious toleration 
by expelling all Quakers from New Netherland and by 
imposing fines and otherwise terrifying all who did not 
accept the teachings of the Dutch Reformed church, the 
established Protestant church of Holland. He vigorously 
extended the authority of New Netherland southward as 
far as Delaware Bay, in 1655, reducing the Swedish colo- 
nies to submission. In these years, 1696-97, the Puritans 
were persecuting Quakers, Lutherans, and Episcopalians 
in New England ; they were persecuting Roman Catholics 
in Maryland, and Episcopalians were intolerant of Puritans 
in Virginia. Governor Stuyvesant was quite in the fashion, 
after all. The poor Quakers and Roman Catholics were in 
trouble in every colony. However, the Dutch government 
did not approve of Stuyvesant's imprisonment, fining, 
scourging, or flogging of Quakers, and at last ordered him 
to retract his fiery proclamation; to free his prisoners; to 
remit his fines, and to conduct himself in a more Christian- 
like fashion. But he behaved under protest. 

The trials of Governor Stuyvesant now came thick and 
fast. In 1664, England put forward a formal claim to all 
New Netherland on the ground of Cabot's discovery of 
North America nearly two centuries before. It was a bold 
stroke, sustained by a powerful nation. Holland protested, 
but in vain. New Netherland lay between New England 
and Virginia. If it became English territory, all the vast 
region from New France in the north to New Spain in the 
south would be bound by a compact chain of prosperous 



1665] RELIGIOUS SECTS 53 

English colonies. Without consulting Holland, Charles II., 
by charter, suddenly gave all New Netherland to his brother 
James, then Duke of York and Albany, and soon afterward 
James II. In 1664, a fleet in command of Colonel Nichols 
was sent to take' New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant was furious, 
and strove to awaken resistance. He declared that he would 
rather be carried out dead than surrender the fort. The 
West India Company had lost its opportunity, and nobody 
loved it well enought to fire a gun in defense of New 
Amsterdam. The people believed that they would be 
happier and more prosperous under English rule. So the 
Dutch flag came down and the English flag went up, amidst 
the roar of English cannon in the bay. Then followed a 
change of names. Fort Orange was called Albany ; New 
Amsterdam, New York City, and New Netherland, New 
York. Thus for a time New York included the present 
state of that name, also New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ver- 
mont, and portions of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

The change brought the common law of England to New 
York. In 1665 a code was drawn up, known as the Duke's 
Law, which guaranteed the rights of trial by jury; freedom 
of worship to all Christians, and equality in taxation. All 
able-bodied men were liable to militia duty. The people 
wanted an assembly, like that of the Virginians. The Duke 
of York promised a charter and an assembly with the usual 
powers, but on becoming king he refused to allow the char- 
ter to issue. An assembly had been elected, but the duke, 
now James II., ordered the governor to dissolve it. Thus 
as early as 1685 the struggle for popular government began 
in New York. With the accession of William and Mary 
the people were allowed to have an assembly. James had 
consolidated New York with New England and New Jer- 
sey, under Sir Edmund Andros as governor. With the 
accession of William and Mary this union ceased. 

The intrigues and wars of Europe were felt in the forests 
of America, and powerful Indian tribes were persuaded to 
league themselves with the French against the English and 
with the English against the French. Louis XIV. tried in 
every way to make North America New France. He sent 
his emissaries among the Five Nations, and won all, 



54 NEW YORK [1689 

except the Mohawks, to take arms against the English. 
Frontenac, governor of Canada, planned the conquest of 
New York. A French fleet should attack New York City. 
A co-operating force of French and Indians set out for 
Albany, but it was too strong for an attack. They burned 
Schenectady and spread alarm through the frontier settle- 
ments. While this expedition was ravaging the northern 
part of the colony, no assembly was in session. News of 
the accession of William and Mary had reached New York, 
but Nicholson, the governor, would not acknowledge the 
authority of the new monarchs and remained true to James 
II. At this crisis, in 1689, Jacob Leisler, the captain of a 
military company, proclaimed William and Mary, and called 
a colonial Congress to assemble in New York City to con- 
sider the state of the country. Delegates came from Ply- 
mouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and met in the first 
American Congress. It decided to send an army against 
Canada. While Leisler was directing affairs, an English 
ship arrived. Its captain claimed that he represented Colonel 
Sloughter, whom King William had appointed governor of 
the colony, but the captain showed no commission for his 
demand. An insurrection followed and several people were 
killed. Early in the spring of 1691, the new governor 
arrived, and Leisler promptly surrendered the fort to him, 
but he seized Leisler and accused him of high treason. 
Public opinion was divided. Leisler was hanged, as his 
followers claimed, because he stood for liberty. This was 
fifteen years later than Bacon's rebellion in Virginia. The 
event was long remembered. New York was obliged to 
defend herself against the French. From this time on, for 
sixty years, the entire colony west of the Hudson was in 
constant danger from invasion. The governor of New York 
was usually at Albany and much engaged in military affairs. 
It was clear that a great contest between France and Eng- 
land was at hand, and it looked as if New York would be 
the battle-ground of a war for the continent. During all 
these years the assembly and the governor were in constant 
struggle. The governor insisted on more liberal appropri- 
ations. The assembly, after 1739, made all appropriations 
specific; thus the governor could not pocket any of the 



1689] THE FIRST CONGRESS 55 

public money. The people sided with the representatives. 
Immigration to New York steadily increased during these 
years of political dissensions, and population was cosmopoli- 
tan from the first. For many years the great Dutch estates 
along the Hudson remained intact. This caused immi- 
grants to settle in New York City, or to pass farther west 
than the estates. Thus the interior of the colony, south- 
west of Albany, was taken up by settlers, but all avoided 
the immediate neighborhood of the Five Nations — that is, 
the upper Mohawk Valley, the lake region, and the valley 
of the Genesee. Thus in the middle of the eighteenth 
century the colony was settled over an area but slightly 
larger than that of the old Dutch occupation. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES 
1602-1690 

The Plymouth Company was less successful than the 
London Company in making a settlement. At the time 
when the London Company sent a colony to Virginia, the 
Plymouth Company had sent one, through the activity of 
Sir John Popham, Chief Justice of England, and Sir Ferdi- 
nando Gorges, a soldier in command of the garrison at 
Plymouth. This colony located at the mouth of the Ken- 
nebec River, but it was in no way prepared for the severe 
climate or the hardships of the place, and returned to Eng- 
land with a discouraging report. Even earlier than this 
English ships had occasionally touched at points along the 
coast. Bartholomew Gosnold, in 1602, named Martha's 
Vineyard and Cape Cod, but gave up an attempt to settle 
there. Captain John Smith, who it will be remembered had 
gone home for medical treatment in 16 10, soon recovered, 
and in 1614 returned with two ships of the Plymouth Com- 
pany and explored the coast from Cape Cod to the Penobscot 
River. To this region he gave the name New England. 

Thus, after 16 14, there were within the present bound- 
aries of the United States three loosely defined domains, 
New Spain, New France, and New England. 

Captain John Smith had made a map of the coast which 
was remarkable for its accuracy. He named one river the 
Charles, after the young Prince of Wales, and named Cape 
Ann and Plymouth, where a few years later the pilgrims 
decided to settle. This was Smith's last service in America. 
He had saved the Jamestown colony and helped prepare the 
way for the settlement of New England. It is not strange 
that Americans remember him as one of the foremost men 
in his time. Until New England, his new name for the 
country, came into use, it was often called North Virginia. 

56 



i6i4] THE SEPARATISTS 57 

In Smith's time, religious liberty as now understood 
existed nowhere in the world. Holland allowed the greatest 
amount of religious freedom. England exacted conformity 
with the established church, which then, as now, was the 
Protestant Episcopal church, and everybody was by law 
bound to attend its services and to pay tithes or taxes for 
its support. The law rigorously ignored the right of pri- 
vate judgment in religious matters, and bore hard upon all 
who could not conscientiously accept the teachings, the cere- 
monies, and the exclusive claims of that church. Three 
classes of people suffered : first, the Roman Catholics, who 
could not accept the creed of the established church; 
secondly, the Puritans, who objected to some of its doc- 
trines, but more particularly to many of its ceremonies, and 
thirdly, the Separatists, who objected both to its creed and 
its ceremonies. Differences in religious opinions are among 
the chief subjects of English history during the seventeenth 
century. Indeed, it may be said that this century was one 
of prolonged religious discussion, dissension, and dispersion. 

The English government, with the royal family at the 
head, was composed of the adherents to the established 
church. There seemed no room, and there certainly was 
neither comfort nor safety, in England for those who dis- 
sented from the established order of things. Catholics and 
Puritans therefore suffered, and matters grew steadily worse. 
Then there was talk of migration to a friendlier country. 
The first to move were the Separatists, who, about the time 
of the settlement at Jamestown and for a few years after- 
ward, escaped as best they could to Holland. They came 
from many parts of England, but chiefly from the eastern 
and southern counties. Many of them did not seek Hol- 
land till they had been stripped of their property; had been 
many times in the pillory, in the stocks or in prison, on 
account of their religion. 

The English government treated them like criminals, 
and all because they desired to worship God according to 
their own consciences. For a time they gathered as refu- 
gees in Holland, and principally at Leyden; but they knew 
that in time their children and grandchildren would become 
Dutch, and they wished them to remain English. So they 



58 THE NEW EN(;LAND COLONIES [1620 

turned their thoughts to America and resolved to settle 
there. Their decision was hastened by the prospect of a 
religious war between Holland and Spain, which threatened 
to break out at any time. Their chief desire was to live in 
a land subject to English laws, where the English language 
would be used and all the dear old customs of their English 
home might continue. They hoped that the intolerable 
laws would at last cease, for they were loyal Englishmen, 
and knew many of the best men in the kingdom sympa- 
thized with them. 

Virginia offered a secure retreat: not the southern part, 
for there the established church prevailed, and they would 
be no better off than in England; but in northern Virginia, 
or New England as they were now calling that country, in 
the land granted to the Plymouth Company, they decided 
to look for a new home. 

Few of the Separatists in Holland were men of wealth, 
but poverty did not deter them. They were compelled to 
make a hard bargain for their passage to America. The 
best terms they could make with the London money-lenders 
would have deterred less resolute men. They could be 
transported to America, to some place near the Hudson 
River, provided they would sign an agreement to give to 
the money-lenders one-half of all accumulations of the next 
seven years; every man was to work six days in the week. 
At the end of the period, the immigrant was not to own the 
land he had cultivated unless the Plymouth Company chose 
to give it to him on its own terms. 

Though the Pilgrims thus practically made themselves 
indentured servants to the brokers who lent them money, 
they willingly preferred this hardship to their prospects in 
Holland or England. All things at last being ready, on the 
1 6th of September, 1620, they sailed from Plymouth, 
England, in the Mayflower. Besides the crew, one hundred 
and two persons were on board, of whom about a dozen were 
hired servants. After a stormy voyage they came to land 
near Provincetown, on Cape Cod, on the 21st of November. 
This was quite accidental, as they had started for some 
point farther south, in what is now known as New Jersey. 

Finding themselves within the grant of the Plymouth 



i62o] THE LANDING FROM THE MAYFLOWER 59 

Company, and knowing that this company wanted settlers, 
they decided to remain and select a home. While at anchor- 
age in Provincetown Bay, they drew up a compact or con- 
stitution of government in the cabin of the Mayflower, the 
first agreement of the kind made in America. As loyal 
subjects of England, they agreed to abide by whatever laws 
they might draw up "for the general good of the colony." 
John Carver was chosen governor. Thus they began self- 
government and laid the foundation of the first New Eng- 
land commonwealth. 

Meanwhile, the captain of the Mayflower, anxious to 
return, became roughly impatient, and constantly insisted 
that the Pilgrims leave the ship, as his part of the contract 
had been performed. But the land near them was bleak 
and barren, and therefore they sent out an exploring party 
to discover a more hospitable place for a settlement. Cap- 
tain Miles Standish, one of the chief men among them, set 
out with a small company in a boat and explored the shore. 
Reaching the point which John Smith had called Plymouth, 
the party, not without difficulty, made a landing, and to 
this point, on the 2 1st of December, the Mayflower brought 
them all. Tradition says that they landed on the bowlder 
which, now known as Plymouth Rock, has for many years 
been preserved and marked by a monument. 

The Pilgrims gladly hastened ashore. For them and 
for America Plymouth Rock was the stepping-stone to a 
new and better order of things. It lay at the threshold of 
liberty, education, and self-government, but these blessings 
seemed a long way off. Before spring, half the colony was 
dead, and the rude fireless huts were reminders of the 
sickness and death of their companions. Governor Carver 
was among the dead. Indians were frequently seen hover- 
ing about. Had it not been for the discovery of some 
buried Indian corn, the colony would probably have starved 
to death. But no one went back with the Mayflower. 

In the spring, the various families set about building 
substantial log houses, so that in a short time each family 
was in a home of its own. No man depended on England 
for his supplies. Each relied on himself. There was no 
thought of abandoning New England, 



6o THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1621 

William Bradford was chosen governor in 1621, and 
annually for the next thirty-six years, with the exception 
of five in which he declined election. Early in May the 
men of the colony met in town-meeting to discuss public 
affairs, to make laws, and to choose town of^cers. This 
introduction of the town-meeting was a most important 
event in our history. It meant that local self-government 
was to prevail in New England, and ultimately in all parts 
of the United States that have felt the influence of New 
England. 

This belt in which the town-meeting exists in some form 
coincides closely with the belt originally granted to the 
Plymouth Company. The town-meeting differed from the 
House of Burgesses in being democratic instead of repre- 
sentative in character. The people of Virginia have never 
met in town-meeting. The people of New England be- 
gan with the town-meeting. There all the freemen met as 
equals and became familiar with the wants of the town and 
participated in the discussion of public matters. Thus the 
town-meeting became the citizens' training-school. 

While the Pilgrims were thus engaged in getting a start 
in the wilderness, the neighboring Indians, shortly before 
greatly diminished in numbers by an epidemic of smallpox, 
determined to attack Plymouth and destroy the settlement. 
Canonicus, their chief, sent a bundle of arrows tied with a 
rattlesnake-skin as a declaration of war. Bradford returned 
the compliment by stuf^ng the skin full of powder and ball, 
and sent it to the chief. The Indians had heard the Eng- 
lish guns, and attributed a mysterious power to gunpowder. 
Bradford's message was received with respect, and Canoni- 
cus decided not to go to war. With most of the tribes 
Bradford made treaties, and one of them, with Massasoit, 
was unbroken for fifty years. 

The Indians' respect for these treaties was largely due 
to their fear of Captain Miles Standish and his army of 
twelve men. Though small, it kept the neighboring Indian 
world in awe, and its captain's military reputation has o*ut- 
lived that of thousands of Americans who have commanded 
far greater bodies of troops. Standish wasted no ammu- 
nition, and he and his men were thorough Indian fighters. 



i628] PILGRIMS AND PURITANS 6i 

Before seven years were over, the Pilgrims had so pros- 
pered that they decided to buy the shares of the Engh'sh 
merchants in the colony. The terms were even harder than 
those they had made to secure passage in the Mayflower. 
They had to pay from thirty to fifty per cent interest on 
the money which they borrowed in London, and with which 
they now made the purchase. But they willingly made the 
sacrifice. Henceforth every man could own land for him- 
self and be independent. 

All the Pilgrims were Puritans, but all Puritans were 
not Pilgrims. Only those who settled in Plymouth have 
been given the title Pilgrims. They compared themselves 
to the Children of Israel, who for many years were pilgrims 
in a strange land. Plymouth never became a large colony, 
and it merged in Massachusetts at last, but its history is of 
a mighty beginning, for it stood for high principles and 
human rights. As long as the history of our country is 
read, the story of Plymouth will remain one of the most 
interesting chapters. The greatness of men often lies as 
much in what they attempt as in what they accomplish. 
While all the Pilgrims were Puritans, we shall soon see that 
only a few Puritans were Pilgrims. 

The English reformers, or Puritans, multiplied fast after 
the accession of Charles I. The king was hostile to them, 
but so was he hostile to the law of the land, for he tried to 
rule without Parliaments. The Puritans, therefore, found 
themselves only a part of a large company in the kingdom 
who stood for the ancient rights and liberties of Englishmen. 
These forces combined caused the downfall of the king and 
established the short-lived commonwealth. Many Puritans 
desired to follow whither the Pilgrims had led the way, and 
before the seventeenth century was half gone, various parts 
of New England were settled by vigorous Puritan commu- 
nities. 

The usual method of emigration was for a church, con- 
sisting of from twenty to a hundred families, with their 
minister, to unite in making the voyage to New England. 
They hired a ship, took their household goods, their ser- 
vants, and their domestic animals, and relying on the best 
maps and authorities obtainable, boldly set out for a home 



62 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1628 

in the wilderness. In this manner many of the older towns 
in New England were founded. 

While the Pilgrims were building up Plymouth, Eng- 
lish ships were bringing over little communities, each usu- 
ally constituting a church, and these were settling along the 
coast and the rivers of New England. In 1628, John Endi- 
cott, of Dorchester, and some of his Puritan neighbors came 
over and founded Salem, which name they gave the place 
because they sought peace. Usually the Puritans called 
their new home in New England after their old home in old 
England, as is evident on comparing the maps of the two 
countries. Many of the New England settlements were 
made like that at Plymouth, without the authority of the 
king or of the Plymouth Company. 

A number of wealthy Puritans having resolved to pur- 
chase a tract of country in New England, obtained the land 
between the rivers Charles and Merrimac, and westward to 
the South Sea. This purchase gave them the exclusive 
right to the soil. They petitioned the king for a charter 
as "The Company of Massachusetts Bay." Charles I. 
granted it, and thus they obtained the right to organize a 
government over their purchase. The charter empowered 
them to elect annually a governor, a deputy governor, and 
a council of eighteen, called assistants. Only members of 
the company could vote for these. Thus the Massachusetts 
Bay Company, like any corporation at the present time, 
was managed exclusively by its own members. Outsiders 
had no voice in its control. 

The charter was remarkable in several respects. It 
authorized the company to establish a government of its 
own choosing and subject to its own control; and also, by 
omitting to specify the place where this government was to 
be set up, it gave the company liberty to establish it any- 
where within English dominions. One important condition 
was prescribed by the king, and it was found in all English 
charters of later date: that though the colonists could make 
their own laws, these must not conflict with the laws and 
customs of England. 

Whether or not the company intended to have its head- 
quarters in England and to send colonists to America, as the 



1630] MASSACHUSETTS 63 

London Company had done, is somewhat uncertain. But 
all doubt came speedily to an end. King Charles began to 
show such hostility to the Puritans in England that they 
who had obtained the charter feared he would revoke it, 
and in 1629 they decided to migrate to New England and 
take their charter with them. 

Large numbers of Puritans took advantage of the oppor- 
tunity, and in 1630 made settlements within the bounds of 
the new purchase. Nearly a thousand came to Salem under 
John Winthrop, who was chosen first governor of Massa- 
chusetts Bay Colony. Many of the settlers were wealthy, 
and most of them brought abundant supplies. Never 
before had so large and so valuable a stock of horses, sheep, 
and cattle been brought at one time to this country. 
Charleston, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Watertown were 
founded in this year. At first, Governor Winthrop chose 
Charleston as the political center of the colony, but attracted 
by the advantages of the neighboring peninsula, which the 
Indians called Shawmut, he removed there, and called the 
place Tremont, because of its three hills, but the name was 
soon changed to Boston, after the old English city of that 
name, the home of many of the settlers. But Winthrop's 
name, Tremont, is preserved in the town to this day, in the 
names of a permanent street and of various institutions. 

As the Puritans had left England chiefly on account of 
their opinions in religion, they immediately took care that 
no other opinions than their own should be tolerated in 
Massachusetts. Each town had one church of the reformed 
order. The ancient Episcopal form was greatly modified, 
and all who did not concur in the change and give it sup- 
port were expelled from the town. "Being in the same 
church fellowship" was a saying in common use, and was a 
requirement carried out to the letter. The Puritans felt 
that as they had purchased the land and secured a charter, 
they were entitled to establish a state church to suit them- 
selves. If a man believed differently in church matters, let 
him settle elsewhere. Thus all who came to Massachusetts 
were expected to conform to the Puritan church or to quit 
the country. 

The Massachusetts Bay Colony rapidly increased in 



64 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1630 

population, but only those of church membership, and who 
had been admitted as freemen, were voters. Among the 
first buildings erected in a town was the meeting-house, 
used on the Sabbath day as a church, and on other days, 
as might be required, for civil business. The most impor- 
tant man in town was the minister, commonly called the 
parson — that is, the person of the town. He and the elders 
of the church decided on the admission of new members. 
No man voted in town-meeting who had not first been voted 
in as a church member. The Puritan reformation went to 
great lengths. The term parish, in familiar use in England, 
was abandoned, and no word was put in its place. 

Each settlement was called a town, which usually was 
a rural district with here and there a village, the whole 
seldom having an area of more than ten square miles. To 
this entire area the term township was often given, and the 
larger villages within it were called towns. The township 
was the unit of civil measure, and its affairs were regulated 
in town-meeting. At first the town-meeting was held in 
the church, which was fort, church, and town hall all in one. 
The procedure in a town-meeting then did not differ essen- 
tially from that of to-day. It was the day of beginnings, 
when American civil institutions were getting under way. 

The meeting was presided over by a moderator, or chair- 
man. By his side were the selectmen, and the town clerk. 
The business was conducted according to parliamentary 
rules. The freemen, that is the electors, w^ere privileged 
to make motions and to join in the debates. The younger 
men listened to their elders, and thus became familiar with 
the conduct of public business. As New England filled 
with settlers, they instituted the town-meeting, and thus 
from the first became accustomed to the rules of parliament- 
ary order, to public discussion, and to self-government. 
Thus was established the means for political education of 
the voters, and our country has never known a better. 
Church and state were united in these early New England 
days. Unless a man was in church fellowship, he could not 
vote in town-meeting. Therefore, before he could be 
admitted as an elector he had to show a certificate of 
church membership signed by the minister. 



1636] JOHN HARVARD 65 

The Puritans were an educated people. Many of them 
had studied at Oxford or Cambridge. Others had attended 
church schools in their old homes. A few of the humbler 
sort could not write. It does not appear that there were 
any who could not read. The chief book was the Bible, of 
which there were two versions, Tyndale's, and King James's 
then recent one of 161 1. The latter was called the "New 
Version," and was not yet in common use. The Bible used 
by the Puritans was a large folio, heavy and expensive. 
No small edition existed. Familiar as they were with the 
Bible, the Puritans naturally made it the basis of all their 
laws, many of which were taken from the Old Testament 
with little change. 

Offenses were punished with severity, and by the letter 
of the law an incorrigible child could be put to death. 
But the Puritans were better than their laws. Fully aware 
of the importance of education for a self-government, they 
made provision for free public schools from the first. Each 
town should support one at common expense. Many of 
the leading Puritans were Cambridge men, and in order 
that their children might have the best possible training, 
they decided to found a college. By vote of the town it 
was located at Cambridge, in 1636. John Harvard, in 1638, 
bequeathed the young college half his estate, about seven 
hundred and fifty pounds, and all his books, three hundred 
and twenty volumes, and by vote of the General Court 
the college was given his name. 

In this humble way began Harvard University, the 
oldest in America. It was thought that the college would 
be a notable means of Christianizing the Indians, as it could 
educate young Indians to serve as missionaries. The con- 
version of the Indians was felt by the Puritans to be a 
Christian duty. The Rev. John Eliot spent many years in 
translating the Bible into the Indian tongue. The Indians 
and their language have passed away, and Eliot's Indian 
Bible cannot now be read. A few Indians studied at Har- 
vard, and some became preachers to their people. Eliot's 
work and influence with the Indians was soon to prove a 
source of safety to the colony. 

All the people of Massachusetts did not approve of the 



(>(i THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1637 

conduct of public affairs. An increasing number objected 
to t'he exclusion from town-meeting of those who differed 
in religious opinions from the ruling party. Chief of these 
was Roger Williams, a popular minister of Salem. He 
boldly preached the doctrine of religious toleration and the 
separation of church and state. In this he was far ahead 
of the age in which he lived. Few in the seventeenth cen- 
tury dared to hold such ideas as his. Williams advocated 
a number of new theories. Churches, he said, should be 
supported by voluntary contributions of their members. 
No man should be compelled by law to support any min- 
ister; men are responsible to God, not to man, for their 
religious opinions, and every man should worship God 
according to the dictates of his own conscience. 

The king, said Williams, had no right to give away any 
part of America. The Indians owned the land, and alone 
could rightfully dispose of it. Such ideas as these alarmed 
the ministers and magistrates, not of Salem only, but of all 
Massachusetts. Williams was ordered to leave the colony 
for England at once. Instead of complying, he fled, in 
deepest winter, southward among the Narragansetts, with 
whom he became friendly, whose language he learned to 
speak, and from whom he bought a large tract of land as a 
home for others who thought like himself. 

During the winter of 1636-37, a great religious dispute 
broke out in Boston. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson took issue 
with several of the leading ministers of the ruling party, and 
dissension arose so high that the colony was threatened 
with civil outbreaks. Mrs. Hutchinson agreed mainly with 
the opinions of Williams. She was banished from the 
colony, and with her friends turned to the south. There 
they bought the island of Aquidneck and built a town 
which they called Portsmouth. Newport, at the opposite 
end of the island, was begun at about the same time. The 
region was called Rhode Island. People of liberal views, 
and some of these were exceeding strange, settled there, and 
being in mutual sympathy, they united with the people of 
Providence, forming the colony of Rhode Island and Provi- 
dence Plantations. 

After many hardships and a tedious winter journey 



1663] THE GOVERNMENT 67 

overland, Roger Williams reached the head of Narragansett 
Bay in the spring of 1636, and there laid the foundation of 
a new colony and a new town, which he called Providence, 
His idea was a novel one, to establish a colony in which 
religious liberty might be fully enjoyed by all. With 
unprecedented liberality, he made all men welcome, what- 
ever their religious opinions. This was the first time in the 
history of the world that such a thing had been done. 
Rhode Island was the only colony in which freedom in 
religion was as ample as it is to-day all over the United 
States. This fact alone would place Roger Williams among 
the world's greatest men. 

The government of the colony was with the heads of 
families. Only a married man could vote. Each town was 
governed through its town-meeting. As population in- 
creased, the right to vote, as elsewhere in America at the 
time, was limited to men who owned land. Williams 
obtained a charter for his colony in 1643. It was liberal in 
its provisions, and allowed the people of the colony to govern 
themselves, with the usual proviso that their laws must not 
be contrary to those of England. Under the charter the 
colony prospered, and in 1663 the king granted another, 
which confirmed the people in their religious freedom and 
made them all but independent. They elected all their 
officials, as did the people of Connecticut. When the 
Revolution broke Qut, Rhode Island had no royal governor 
to expel. The change from colony to state in 1776 was 
effected without change in the government except from 
allegiance to the king to allegiance to the colony. With 
this modification, the charter of 1663 continued in force till 
1842. 

Like the people of the other New England colonies, 
those of Rhode Island supported schools from the first. 
Brown University was founded in 1764, with a broad and 
liberal charter free from sectarian prejudices. No colony 
was more thoroughly permeated with the spirit of industry 
and independence. In the year when the university was 
founded, and when the question whether Parliament could 
tax America was already under discussion. Governor 
Stephen Hopkins denied the right in fearless language, and 



68 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1629 

twelve years later sealed his opinions by signing the Decla- 
ration of Independence. 

In the year 1636, Charles I., who barely tolerated and 
never liked the Puritans, either in England or America, 
repented of his charter to them, and set about to annul it. 
He proposed to divide Massachusetts among his favorites, 
and chiefly between Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain 
John Mason, who in 1623 had founded Portsmouth in the 
present state of New Hampshire. On their land grant in 
New England they tried to do what Raleigh had attempted 
fifty years before — to found colonies that should maintain 
a profitable rent-roll. Though the day for such speculation 
had forever passed. Gorges and Mason tried hard to restore 
it. They had secured ample grants, and under their en- 
couragement settlements were made along the Piscataqua 
River. These were chiefly the work of Mason, and were 
the beginning of New Hampshire. Hearing of the hostility 
of the king, the people of Massachusetts hastened to put 
the colony in a state of defense. Forts were erected at 
Boston, Salem, and other ports, and militia bands were put 
in training. Suddenly the English revolution broke out in 
Scotland, and Charles was too much concerned for his own 
safety to carry out his plans against Massachusetts. 

Mason and Gorges held the land from the Merrimac to 
the Kennebec in common. A few settlers ventured into 
this wilderness, and were the pioneers of flourishing commu- 
nities. The proprietors divided their grants in 1629; the 
eastern part, called Maine, fell to Gorges, the western part 
to Mason. He called it New Hampshire, from a county in 
England. Just east of Bath, at Point Pemaquid, the first 
permanent settlement was made in Maine, in 1625. Massa- 
chusetts laid claim to a portion of Maine by the charter of 
1629, and by her second charter (1692) secured the whole 
region as the District of Maine. The union continued till 
1820, when Maine became an independent state. 

From the time of its settlement, New Hampshire was 
a region of many controversies. Many of these were church 
disputes, for among the settlers were many Episcopalians, 
to whom the Puritan element was hostile. The church 
divisions in Massachusetts led many followers of Anne 



1635] NEW HAMPSHIRE, CONNECTICUT 69 

Hutchinson to immigrate to New Hampshire, and the Massa- 
chusetts government was hostile to them. There were also 
many disputes about land titles. Mason's heirs, at his 
death in 1635, denied the claims of the settlers to their 
lands. Meanwhile, Massachusetts claimed the greater part 
of New Hampshire. Thus the settlers had a deplorable 
time. Litigation lasted for half a century; the settlers had 
to fight Indians meanwhile, and altogether the growth of 
the colony was seriously retarded. 

Left almost without a general government, the settlers 
in the towns of Dover, Portsmouth, and Exeter organized 
government for themselves, and drew up written agreements 
similar to the constitution of Connecticut. In 164 1 the 
settlers along the Piscataqua and to the south united with 
Massachusetts, but did not give up their rights of self-gov- 
ernment. In 1675, by order of the crown, the colony, with 
its original boundaries, was restored to one of the heirs of 
Mason, but five years later it was made a royal province. 

The first numerous body of immigrants to New Hamp- 
shire came from Londonderry, Ireland, in 17 19, and gave 
the name to their new home. They were Scotch-Irish 
Protestants, brought the knowledge of flax culture and the 
manufacture of linen, and began this great industry in this 
country. 

West of the Connecticut lay a disputed region, claimed 
by New Hampshire and New York, and called the New 
Hampshire Grants. The dispute began in 1763, About 
forty years earlier, Massachusetts had built a fort near the 
present town of Brattleboro, and called it Fort Dummer, 
after Governor Dummer. So Massachusetts laid claim to 
the grants. Meanwhile, Governor Wentworth, of New 
Hampshire, had laid out some hundred and thirty-five 
townships in the grants, and many New Hampshire farmers 
had bought land there. The disputed region was a paradise 
for speculators and a fountain of litigation. Finally, in 
1765, tire king decided in favor of New York, and thus the 
people of Vermont found themselves under the necessity 
of paying for their lands a second time. 

Under the leadership of Ethan Allen and Seth Baker, 
the people of southern Vermont prepared to resist the 



70 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1635 

officials from New York who came to collect the purchase 
money or to eject the settlers. Amidst the excitement, 
the American Revolution broke out. 

While towns were springing up in Massachusetts, and 
Williams was laying the foundations of Rhode Island, the 
land to the southwest, largely comprising the Connecticut 
Valley, was the scene of new settlements and the center of 
rival claims. It was the borderland of New England and 
New Netherland. The Dutch had been exploring and 
settling the valley of the Hudson for twenty years, and thc\- 
claimed the land between the Hudson River and the Con- 
necticut. 

The English also laid claim to the region. As early as 
1633 the Dutch had built a small fort on the site of Hart- 
ford, and opened trade with the Indians. Soon after, a 
small schooner from the Plymouth settlement made its way 
up the Connecticut. The Dutch at the fort forbade its 
farther ascent, under threat of opening fire. However, the 
English continued up the river regardless of the Dutch, and 
disembarking, began a settlement which they called Wind- 
sor. They too wished to control the fur trade with the 
Indians. The region between the Hudson and the Con- 
necticut abounded with game at this time, and whoever 
secured the monopoly of the Indian trade was sure to gain 
great wealth. But the fur trade was not the most impor- 
tant interest. The power that controlled the mouth of the 
Connecticut held the key to the greater part of New Eng- 
land. 

The son of the governor of ^Massachusetts, called the 
younger Winthrop to distinguish him from his father, was 
one of the few men who saw the importance of securing 
control of the lower Connecticut. He built a fort at the 
mouth of the river in 1635, ^^^ thus cut off the Dutch at 
Hartford. Winthrop acted in co-operation with two emi- 
nent Puritans, Lord Say and Lord Brooke, and to the new 
settlement he gave the name Saybrooke. The Puritan 
migration was now at its height. Ships were arriving at 
Boston crowded with new settlers. Many of these remained 
in Boston or in the neighboring towns, but the policy of the 
Massachusetts towns was e.xclusive, and onlv duly admitted 



1639] THOMAS HOOKER 71 

church members were allowed to vote; or, as the right was 
described in those days, were "admitted freemen of the 
town." The power of the ministers was supreme. Many 
of the recently arrived Puritans, together with some older 
settlers, disapproved of this. They wished a separation of 
church and state. 

Thomas Hooker, the learned preacher at Cambridge, 
convinced that the prevailing government was undemo- 
cratic, began a series of eloquent protests against the ruling 
aristocrat. He believed that government should be in the 
hands of the people, and he was the first in New England 
to advocate manhood suffrage. Roger Williams had advo- 
cated freedom in worship, but did not emphasize political 
rights like Hooker. Boston was again profoundly stirred. 
Governor Winthrop, who differed wholly with Hooker, 
believed in an aristocracy and looked upon popular govern- 
ment as a delusion. Only those who possessed property 
of considerable amount, and who were in good standing in 
the Puritan church, he said, ought to be allowed to vote. 
A higher property qualification should be required of office- 
holders. Here was a radical difference of opinion. 

The people took sides; the majority with the governor, 
the minority with the minister. There was no open quarrel, 
and Hooker and his friends decided to find a more congenial 
country. They had heard of the abundant game, the 
magnificent forests, the fertile meadows, the broad, naviga- 
ble rivers in the country which the younger Winthrop had 
lately secured from the Dutch, and in 1636 the migration to 
Connecticut began, overland. Hooker leading the way. He 
and his immediate followers founded Hartford. History 
here repeated itself. Massachusetts was largely settled 
by churches that had migrated in a body from various 
towns in England. Connecticut was now settled by 
churches that migrated from Massachusetts. Windsor and 
Wethersfield were settled, the one by the Puritans from Dor- 
chester, the other by Puritans from Watertown. In 1639 
the people of these three new towns assembled at Hartford 
and gave formal approval to a constitution of government 
written by Hooker. The towns united, and became the 
beginning of Connecticut. 



73 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1639 

The organization of a new government long ago ceased 
being an uncommon event in America, but the people of 
the three Connecticut towns were the first to start with a 
written constitution. It differed from the unwritten con- 
stitution of Massachusetts chiefly in not restricting the right 
to vote to members of the church. 

Hardly were the Connecticut towns begun before a ter- 
rible Indian war broke out. The fiercest of the New Eng- 
land tribes, the Pequots, living in the southeastern part of 
Connecticut as it is known to-day, and chiefly in the 
Thames Valley, planned a general extermination of the 
English settlements and sought alliance with the Narragan- 
setts on the east and the Wampanoags and Mohicans in 
the north. Roger Williams's influence with the Narragan- 
setts prevented this league. Then the Pequots, believing 
themselves the greatest warriors in the world, decided to 
make war alone, attacked the isolated towns, and committed 
fearful atrocities. 

The Connecticut towns were scarcely a year old and 
unprepared for war. Finally the English rose in their 
might. Massachusetts and the Connecticut towns sent 
about a hundred men, joined by nearly as many friendly 
Mohicans. With great cunning they came upon the Pequot 
stronghold on the Mystic River, not far from the present 
city of Stonington. The stronghold was a circular fort of 
logs with two entrances. Captain Mason, who commanded 
the Massachusetts men, held one entrance. Captain Under- 
bill, the leader of the Connecticut men, the other, and the 
soldiers and friendly Indians were quickly distributed about 
the fort. The wigwams were quickly fired, and the fort 
became a mass of flames. Only five of the Pequots escaped ; 
over four hundred perished in the flames or were shot down 
as they tried to get away. The tribe was wiped out. For 
the next forty years New England had no Indian wars, 
and for the first time the settlers felt free from fear of the 
savages. 

While the Pequot war was raging, a great company of 
Puritans, led by their minister, John Davenport, arrived in 
search of a home. For a time they considered various 
localities, but at length chose the coast of Long Island, and 



1650] THE PEOPLE 73 

in 1638 began the town of New Haven. The country of 
the Pequots was now open to settlers, and this determined 
their choice, Davenport and his followers wished to estab- 
lish a state whose only law should be the Bible. Other 
towns were founded near by during the next three years, 
as Milford, Guilford, and Stanford, and all comprised the 
New Haven Colony. New England was now pretty well 
taken up. 

There were large unsettled areas, but they were claimed 
by adjacent colonies. We must not think of the state boun- 
daries of New England as they now exist as the boundaries 
of the New England colonies in 1641. Except as laid down 
by royal charter, boundaries in these early days can hardly 
be said to have existed, and the charter descriptions were 
not clear. The five New England colonies were irregular 
in boundaries, and several were within the same jurisdiction. 
Massachusetts Bay was the largest and most popular colony, 
with most of its people in and near Boston. 

In 1650 Massachusetts had three counties. North of 
Massachusetts were a few towns, destined in a quarter of 
a century to be called New Hampshire. Plymouth lay 
to the south, small in numbers, but oldest. Farther south 
lay the towns of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. 
To the west of these was Connecticut, and farther west New 
Haven. 

In these five colonies, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, 
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, and 
New Haven, lived about twenty-six thousand people, of 
whom about one in five was born in New England. From 
the time of t-he founding of the New Haven Colony, the 
exodus of Puritans from England to New England ceased. 
This was chiefly due to the overthrow of Charles I. and the 
establishment of the commonwealth in England, when the 
tables were turned and the Puritans came into power. The 
cavaliers now came to America, but not to New England. 
They went to Virginia, whose people and institutions were 
more congenial to them. 

The people of New England were at this time farmers 
or fishermen, but oftentimes the people on the coast com- 
bined the two occupations. Boston and Salem contained 



74 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1643 

many mechanics, and among them skillful shipwrights. 
These towns also had a few warehouses and many shops. 
Nearly every man was the head of a family and owned his 
home, with its pleasant garden and abundant fruit-trees. 
At Cambridge, the printing-press was at work as early as 
1639. Although Puritan ways were somewhat stern, the 
people were well housed, well fed, and contented. They 
had few amusements. The climate was severe, the soil 
thin, and the necessity of labor incessant. But the people 
were free, and happier than they could have been anywhere 
else in the world. 

In 1643 the first colonial union and the first political 
union in the New World was formed by New Haven, Con- 
necticut, Plymouth, and Massachusetts for the purpose of 
common protection, chiefly from the Dutch and the In- 
dians. It was a military league exclusively; the promotion 
of trade, commerce, or industry was not mentioned. Military 
supplies were apportioned among the four colonies, each of 
which reserved all its rights of local government. Rhode 
Island was not included in the league, because its people 
were not "in the same church fellowship"; that is, were 
not Congregationalists, but mostly Baptists. 

Two commissioners from each colony composed a body 
of eight who directed military matters, who were empowered 
by the articles to act as arbitrators in all disputes between 
the four colonies, but who had no power to execute their 
own decrees. Among the provisions of the articles was one 
requiring the return of fugitives from justice. It was 
repeated a hundred and forty-seven years later in the Con- 
stitution of the United States.* 

About twenty years before this time, a religious society 
arose in England calling themselves Friends, but named 
Quakers by those who difTered from them. Their founder, 
George Fox, was a pure and lovable man, and he and his 
followers, taking the Bible as their guide, preached the doc- 
trine of non-resistance to man, and the worship of God 
without the intervention of ceremonies or priests. One 
peculiar custom instituted by the Friends was the wearing 
of the hat on nearly all occasions, not to show disrespect 

♦Art. IV, Sec. 2, Clause 2. 



i66i] THE QUAKERS 75 

to other men, but to show honor to God, before whom alone 
all should uncover. To this habit the Friends tenaciously 
clung, and thereby frequently got into trouble. They 
would not take off their hats in court, or even in the presence 
of the king. Some of their religious views were considered 
very dangerous by the Puritans. 

Much to the distress of the people of New England, the 
Friends began to arrive in Boston, in Salem, and at some 
other points, about the time of the restoration, 1660. Puri- 
tan New England was more hostile to them than Puritan 
England, and the excitement wrought by their arrival sur- 
passed that of the days of Mrs. Hutchinson. The people 
of Rhode Island, whom the four colonies had refused a part 
in the late union, treated the Friends as they wished to be 
treated themselves; but the legislatures of the united colo- 
nies made haste to pass very severe laws against them, for- 
bidding them to come, forbidding them to stay, forbidding 
any one harboring them. The Friends ignored these laws, 
for they came to convert the Puritans to Friendly views, 
and therefore rather welcomed persecution. As Rhode 
Island was well disposed to them, they did not show great 
desire to go there, but turned their faces boldly toward 
Massachusetts. 

A persecution of the Quakers now began, even more 
cruel than any the Puritans had ever suffered in England. 
First they were banished, but returning, they were im- 
prisoned, were beaten, were pilloried, and some were 
hanged, among them Mrs. Dyer, a woman of as pure and 
brave a soul as Mrs. Hutchinson. After two years of im- 
prisoning and hanging Quakers, public opinion underwent 
a radical change. It was now the year 166 1, and the 
Massachusetts judges saw bloody work ahead. Quaker 
preachers multiplied on every side, for they had no fear of 
persecution or death. The judges had little heart in the 
business, for though some of them feared public sentiment 
much, they feared their own consciences more. 

One morning the judges opened court in Boston as usual, 
and were proceeding with the business of the day, when 
suddenly Wenlock Christison, a Friend of noble appear- 
ance, stood before them. Lifting his hand high, he turned 



76 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1665 

to the judges, saying: "I am come here to warn you that 
ye shed no more innocent blood. * ' Instantly he was seized, 
was quickly tried, and was condemned to be hanged ; but the 
sheriff was afraid of the people, and the cruel sentence was 
never executed. In spite of the bloody laws, the Friends 
now came and went, and the excitement against them slowly 
subsided. As soon as persecution ceased, they attracted 
no more public attention. 

When these things were reported to Charles II. he was 
greatly incensed against Massachusetts. It had far exceeded 
its authority, he said, and he ordered that in future no 
Friend should be persecuted in the colony, but be sent to 
England for trial. This was not because he loved Quakers, 
but because he disliked Puritan New England in general, 
and Massachusetts in particular. The colony paid no atten- 
tion to his order. 

The restoration brought back to power a party and a 
part of the people in England who detested the Puritans. 
New England, far away, felt the change. The king classed 
the Puritans with those who had rebelled against his father. 
Two of the judges who had sentenced his father to death, 
GofTe and Whalley, had taken refuge in New England. 
Again and again they escaped capture, and their life forms 
the subject of a most romantic chapter in the history of the 
New Haven Colony. Massachusetts repeatedly irritated 
the king by its independence. 

New Haven and Massachusetts required a man to be a 
church member, that is, a Puritan, before he could vote. 
The king was no admirer of liberal Connecticut, but he 
joined New Haven to it in 1665, and granted a liberal char- 
ter to Connecticut at the same time, and Rhode Island 
received one in the following year. These two colonies 
permitted the Episcopal form of worship, which largely 
accounted for their liberal charters. In spite of the king's 
order, Massachusetts refused to allow the Episcopal form, 
and the king decided to annul her charter. Events in 
PLngland, however, delayed him for a time. 

New England had thus far escaped a general Indian war. 
Here and there a tribe had taken up the hatchet, but the 
fate of the Pequots had overtaken it, or had terrified it to 



I 



1665] KING PHILIP 77 

keep the peace. Wars between the tribes raged all the 
time. Occasionally a settler was struck down. The Eng- 
lish avoided taking sides with any of the tribes as well as 
they could, but neutrality was a difficult policy. In 1675 
the Indians planned a general and united attack on the 
settlements. The Mohicans remained true to the English, 
but the Narragansetts, the Wampanoags and the Nipmucks 
began a terrible war. The chief of the Wampanoags was 
named Philip by the whites. He was a son of Massasoit, 
and though only one of the leading chiefs, his name has 
been given to the war. It raged for two years in various 
parts of New England. Twelve towns were wiped out of 
existence; forty more were in part burned and sacked, and 
nearly twelve hundred whites, men, women, and children, 
were killed, many in the most brutal and shocking man- 
ner. The Wampanoags finally were scattered and mostly 
destroyed. 

Philip fled to the Nipmucks, who had joined the Narra- 
gansetts. Their chief, Canonchet, imitated the English in 
his tactics, and built a fort in an almost impenetrable swamp 
in South Kingston, Rhode Island. Here he gathered about 
three thousand of his warriors. This fort the English, about 
a thousand strong, attacked, and the fate of the Indians was 
like that of the Pequots. The great chiefs were killed and 
the captives were sold as slaves. This was the last great 
Indian war in New England. When it began there were 
more Indians than whites within the domain claimed by the 
New England colonies. 

Charles II. at last gave his attention to Massachusetts, 
and proceeded to annul its charters, and found an excuse at 
hand in the claim of the colony to the Mason and Gorges 
settlements. The English judges decided that the colony 
had no authority to make the claim. The king therefore 
erected the Mason settlements into the royal province of 
New Hampshire. Massachusetts was not to be entirely 
beaten, and bought the district of Maine from the heirs of 
Gorges for twelve thousand pounds. Charles refused to 
recognize the legality of the transaction. But the king did 
not stand alone even in Massachusetts. There a Tory party 
was rapidly strengthening, composed chiefly of non-members 



78 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1687 

of the Congregational church, not all of whom approved of 
the king's policy, but all who approved of it were of these 
non-members. 

Time had greatly changed the structure of society in 
Massachusetts. The majority of the men were members 
of the Congregational church, therefore the control of affairs 
was in their hands. The minority demanded the extension 
of the right to vote, but were denied it. Religious toler- 
ation must be associated with the recognition of political 
rights, many of the majority thought; and to them the 
king's demand that Episcopal churches be allowed in the 
colony seemed eminently reasonable. Aware of this state 
of things, Charles, in 1684, annulled the charter of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. Since 1629 the people of the colony had 
governed themselves quite as they pleased. It was to be 
nearly a hundred years before they were to do so again. 

Amidst these changes Charles died, and was succeeded 
by his brother, the Duke of York, under the title of James 
II., who, having matured a plan for the union of all the 
New England colonies, sent over Sir Edmund Andros as 
governor to execute it. The king's plan had a military 
basis. New England, New York, and New Jersey, he 
thought, could best be put in a state of defense against 
the French in New France if placed in one colonial organiza- 
tion under a trusted ofBcer of the crown. Assemblies and 
charters should be swept away and a military government 
should be established. 

King James little understood the colonists. In vain did 
Andros attempt to abolish the assemblies and to seize the 
charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut. When in open 
assembly at Hartford, in 1687, he demanded the Connecti- 
cut charter, the candles were suddenly extinguished and the 
charter was secretly conveyed away. Long after, when all 
was safe and the vice-royalty of Andros was over, the char- 
ter was found in a hollow oak, in which it was said Captain 
Woodsworth had secreted it. The tree was ever after 
known as the Charter Oak. 

Of the colonial party favorable to the king in Massachu- 
setts, Joseph Dudley was foremost. He and his followers 
welcomed and supported Andros. The governor now set 



1691] THE CHARTERS 79 

himself to work to carry out the neglected order of the late 
king by building an Episcopal church in Boston, known to 
this day as King's Chapel, which was about the least un- 
popular thing he did. He abolished the legislature (the 
General Court) levied taxes himself, and collected them 
through his officers. Life and property were quite at his 
mercy. 

For a time the liberal party held out against him through 
the printing-press, but Andros effectually cut off this attack 
by putting the press under a censor and 'appointing Joseph 
Dudley to the office. Andros was a tyrant, acting in strict 
obedience to his tyrannical master, James II. Amidst his 
acts he was suddenly arrested, and with Dudley imprisoned 
in Boston jail. Word had reached the city of the flight of 
James II., of his abandonment of the throne, and of the 
accession of William and Mary. The revolution of 1688 
thus reached America and affected all the people through- 
out the English colonies. 

The new king did not disturb the charters of Rhode 
Island and Connecticut ; to Massachusetts he granted a new 
one in 1691, and annexed Plymouth. New Hampshire was 
continued as a royal province. Nova Scotia, a recent con- 
quest from France, was joined to Massachusetts. The new 
charter to Massachusetts was like that of 1629, save in 
several important provisions ; henceforth the governor should 
be appointed by the crown instead of being elected by the 
voters in the colony. The town-meetings, the General 
Court, the schools, the Congregational churches, were not 
disturbed. 

There were great innovations; some people called them 
reforms. The right to vote and to hold office should no 
longer be limited to members of the Congregational churches. 
Episcopalians might have churches and might vote and hold 
of^ce, but Roman Catholics were not allowed these privi- 
leges. None of these changes offended the people like the 
provision for a royal governor. Having been accustomed 
to choose their governors so many years, they felt the new 
provision to be a violation of their rights. From this time 
till the war for independence, royal governors were in 
authority, but whether good men or bad, they were in per- 



8o THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1691 

petual quarrel with the General Court. The quarrel was 
the more bitter because Rhode Island and Connecticut were 
allowed to continue their charters under which they elected 
their governors and their assemblies for all these years, and 
they continued their charters after the war for indepen- 
dence was over. 

There is a curious similarity in the tyranny of Andros 
in New England and the tyranny of Berkeley in Virginia, 
the one under Charles I., the other under his son, James 
II. ; and both monarchs prepared the way for a democratic 
revolution. 

At this time a belief in witchcraft was common in 
Europe, and many persons in England accused of practicing 
it were put to death by burning, hanging, or the rack. 

The delusion broke out in Salem in 169 1, swiftly spread 
through the colony, and lasted five years. Ignorance and 
terror helped spread the evil. Any unusual conduct was 
attributed to the presence of some bewitched person in the 
community. The delusion was an epidemic of insanity, 
which passed away as speedily as it had arisen, but not until 
nineteen persons had been hanged and many more accused. 
The courts of law had joined in the delusion, and the trials 
were held at Salem, where the strange records may yet be 
seen. It seems impossible that men and women could be 
guilty of the folly there set forth as truth to be spoken 
before a court of law. 

The truth at last prevailed. The legislature appointed 
a day of fasting and prayer in confession of the terrible 
wrong that had been done. Witnesses who had sworn away 
innocent lives confessed to perjury and signed written state- 
ments of their crime. Judge Sewall, who had presided at 
the trials, read a recantation of his judgment and confessed 
his error, rising from his seat in the Old South Meeting- 
House. He earnestly prayed for forgiveness and that his 
sin might not be visited upon him, his family, or the colony. 
Much has been written in blame of the people of New Eng- 
land for giving way to so terrible a delusion. 

It should be remembered that while they who were 
accused of witchcraft suffered imprisonment or death, they 
suffered by English law; the fault, it must be also remem- 



1691] THE NAVIGATION ACTS 81 

bered, was one of the age, and must not be charged wholly 
against the colony or the mother country. The death 
penalty for the offense continued in force in England forty 
years more (1736), and several persons suffered there. The 
delusion was outgrown in America many years earlier than 
in Europe. 

The new charter never satisfied the people of the colony, 
though it gave the legislature exclusive control of taxation 
and the appropriation of public money, and thus secured 
almost complete independence, it made the governor a 
charge on the colony, and as he was an appointee of the 
crown, people complained of nearly everything he did. He 
wanted a fixed salary that would make him independent of 
the assembly. The people would not listen to such a 
scheme. If he pleased them, he would get his annual salary 
with less opposition. The contest in Massachusetts was 
like that going on in every other royal province, and it con- 
tinued till the Revolution. 

Among the most unpopular acts of Parliament were the 
forest laws and the navigation acts. The forests of New 
England abounded in tall, straight pines, well suited for 
masts, and the king's surveyor had official charge of these 
trees wherever they might be found. The charter of 1 69 1 -92 
forbade the cutting of these trees except for the royal navy. 
A fine tree was worth one hundred pounds, and the owners 
of the forests, to whom the law was specially hateful, were 
in almost constant strife with the royal officers, who were 
instructed to mark the best trees for the king's use. 

Even more unpopular were the navigation laws. These 
dated from Cromwell's time, when they were passed to 
protect English trade, to injure the Dutch, and to keep the 
carrying trade of the world in British hands. In 1660, the 
laws were revived and made more severe. The English 
colonies could not export their productions, at the time 
chiefly tobacco in Virginia, and fish, lumber, casks, and 
leather from New England and New York, except to Eng- 
land or to an English colony. This cut ofT the Americans 
from all direct trade with France, Holland, Germany, and 
Spain. 

In 1663, the law was made more severe by a provision 



82 THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES [1690 

forbidding the colonists to purchase manufactured goods 
anywhere except in England. This meant that it was un- 
lawful to sell any manufactured article outside of the colony 
in which it was made, and was a preventive of American 
manufactures. Ten years later, Parliament added another 
statute which prohibited trade between the colonies. The 
navigation laws, as these various acts were called, were 
passed for the sole purpose of concentrating the trade of 
the colonists in England, and to keep America a producer 
of raw material only, which must be sent to England for 
manufacture. 

Down to the time of William and Mary the laws were 
almost a dead letter, and only encouraged smuggling, dis- 
honesty, and discontent. With the help of the Dutch ves- 
sels, the merchants of New England and New York and the 
Virginians managed to evade the laws quite successfully. 
In 1690, England was at enormous expense to maintain her 
armies and her navy; money must be had and the colonies 
were required to pay their share. The navigation laws 
were to be strictly executed. Opposition to them at once 
revived. Smuggling increased on every hand. The most 
unpopular institution in America was the custom-house. 

From this time till the Revolution, opposition to the 
laws gained strength. No charge against the king in the 
Declaration of Independence was more thoroughly under- 
stood by the people than that which accused him of "cut- 
ting off our trade with all ports of the world." This was 
the intent and the effect of the navigation laws, and one 
of the chief causes of the Revolution. 



CHAPTER VIII 

NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, AND DELAWARE 

1665-1703 

The region now known as New Jersey lay within the 
bounds of New Netherland. It was claimed by the Dutch. 
They built Fort Nassau in 1617 at Bergen, a trading-post 
nearly opposite New Amsterdam. This fort is not to be 
confused with one by the same name built three years 
earlier on the site of the present city of Albany. The con- 
quest of New Netherland in 1664 made the region English 
soil, and King Charles, as we have seen, made his brother, 
the Duke of York, proprietor. The duke granted what is 
now New Jersey to two of his friends, Lord Berkeley and Sir 
George Carteret; the latter had been governor of the Island 
of Jersey in the English Channel. The first English settle- 
ment in New Jersey was at Elizabethtown, in 1665. This 
place was named after the Lady Elizabeth, Carteret's wife. 

Land was to be had almost for the asking, as the pro- 
prietors made liberal terms to settlers, Newark was settled 
in 1666, by a company of Puritan families from New Eng- 
land. The proprietors did not care to settle the lands out- 
right, but sold for a rent of halfpenny an acre, to be paid 
annually and forever. This later caused trouble. The 
proprietors could do nothing with the settlers, who drove 
away the governor sent them and elected one of their own. 
The settlements were chiefly along the Delaware in the 
western part of New Jersey. After nine years' struggle to 
get along with the settlers, Berkeley, in 1674, sold his share 
of the country to Byllinge and Fenwick, two English 
Quakers. 

Two years later the colony was divided into East and 
West Jersey, Carteret retaining his proprietary rights over 
the eastern half, and Byllinge and Fenwick over the western. 

Before the division, Berkeley and Carteret had given 

83 



84 NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE [1676 

the settlers a liberal constitution which allowed them to 
choose an assembly with power to levy taxes and to make 
laws not inconsistent with those of England. The division 
did not disturb their rights. For the first time the English 
Quakers had land in America where they might live in 
peace. In 1676, William Penn joined with other Friends in 
securing possession of West Jersey, and the Quaker migra- 
tion to America began. Salem was founded in that year, 
and Burlington in the year following. Other towns fol- 
lowed. Penn and his associates gave the settlers a charter, 
which confirmed them in all their rights as Englishmen, 
empowered them to choose an assembly and "have laws 
of their own making." Freedom of worship was guaran- 
teed. The executive authority was vested in ten commis- 
sioners chosen by the assembly, a provision which caused 
great dissatisfaction and proved to be a mistake. The 
English town-meeting was introduced, and thus local gov- 
ernment was in the hands of the colonists. 

In all their dealings with the Indians, the Quakers acted 
with fairness and justice. New jersey had no Indian wars. 
The Indians were paid for their lands. Carteret died in 
1682, and Penn and his associates then bought East Jersey 
for three thousand four hundred pounds. This purchase 
united the colony; but troubles soon broke out. The Duke 
of York claimed the right to levy toll on the commerce on 
the Delaware, a claim which the settlers stubbornly denied ; 
but the crown was not to be thwarted. The Duke of York 
as firmly believed in ruling America without assemblies as 
in ruling England without a Parliament. In 1688, the colony 
was united by King James II. with New England and New 
York, and Sir Edmund Andros made governor. The 
existence of the assemblies was threatened. A dozen years 
of civil confusion now followed, and had it not been for the 
town governments there would have been no government 
in the colony. Rival claims to the colony were put forth 
by the heirs of Carteret, by the Quakers, and by New York, 
but at last, in 1702, the proprietary claims were assigned 
to the crown, and New Jersey became a royal province. 

Through association with the New Jersey proprietors, 
William Penn had learned of a vast unoccupied tract of 



i68i] WILLIAM PENN 85 

land stretching west of the Delaware. From his father, 
Admiral Penn, he inherited a claim of sixteen thousand 
pounds against the English government. The experiment 
of founding a Friends' colony in New Jersey did not result 
as Penn had hoped. He saw his opportunity now to realize 
his hopes, and he appealed to Charles II. for a grant of the 
land across the Delaware in payment of the claim. The 
king readily consented. 

A grant of wild land in America was an easy payment 
of such a claim ; but Charles did more. He issued a charter 
to Penn, conveying the land, and also making him absolute 
proprietor of the province of Pennsylvania, a word meaning 
"Penn's woods," a name given by the king in honor of the 
admiral. The new province extended from the Maryland 
boundary in the south to the New York boundary in the 
north ; but neither of these boundaries was definitely known, 
and their loose descriptions in the charter led to disputes 
later. The grant was the largest made in the north to a 
single proprietor. 

By the charter the title to the land and the government 
of the colony were vested in Penn and the form of govern- 
ment was to be determined by him. With the aid of the 
freemen he could make laws for the province, but they were 
to be in conformity with the laws of England and be sub- 
ject to the royal veto. All forms of Christian worship were 
tolerated. The proprietor might establish whatever courts 
of law he thought fit. In earlier charters nothing had been 
said of the right of Parliament to tax the people of a colony. 
Penn's charter contained an express provision authorizing 
such a tax, the only case of such a provision in any of the 
colonial charters. 

Penn had long been an active missionary in the Society 
of Friends, having preached their doctrines in England, in 
Germany, and in Holland. He called his colony the "Holy 
Experiment," and freely invited immigration. His inten- 
tion was to dispose of his lands at the uniform price of forty 
shillings for a hundred acres and a perpetual rent of one 
shilling yearly on each holding. This was an old idea. 
Raleigh had it ; the Calverts of Maryland had it; the New 
Jersey proprietors had tried it, and now Penn had no 



86 NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE [1682 

greater success with it than had the others. His scheme 
for a perpetual rent-roll led to ceaseless disputes and re- 
tarded the progress of his province. 

But his plan for the government of his province was 
more wisely ordered than his land system. Before leaving 
England he drew up his "Frame of Government," a plain 
statement of his own political ideas and of what the settlers 
might expect. Though made absolute proprietor by his 
charter, Penn expressly limited his powers and that of his 
successors so that no proprietary tyranny could be estab- 
lished. He thus put in practice a confidence in popular 
government and in the colonists who might locate in his 
province far greater than that shown by any other founder 
of a state down to his time. He came to his province in 
1682, and landed at Uplands, now called Chester; and in 
taking possession he observed the ancient English ceremony 
of receiving a piece of sod as a sign of his ownership of the 
land. 

While yet at Chester, Penn issued a summons for the 
election of an assembly. With its aid, a body of laws was 
executed known as the Great Law. This code was in the 
nature of a constitution, and contained several provisions 
more liberal than existed in any other colony at the time. 
Among these were the provisions for the death penalty, 
which could be inflicted for one offense only — murder. In 
England and in the other colonies, no less than two hundred 
offenses were at this time punishable by death. Another 
new provision was destined in time to become a part of the 
fundamental law of all the American states: that criminal 
law shall aim to reform, and not merely to punish the 
offender. The laws of the province were to be taught to 
the children. Other provisions were like those common 
to other colonies. Only taxpayers and professing Chris- 
tians were eligible to the assembly. Freedom of worship was 
allowed. Many provisions of this Great Law are substan- 
tially in force in Pennsylvania to-day. 

In the autumn of 1682, Penn located his capital town, 
and named it Philadelphia. He laid it out in squares, with 
regular streets crossing at right angles. To-day Chestnut 
and Walnut streets seem very narrow ; at the time they 



1723] BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 87 

were laid out, no city in the world had broader streets. 
Penn was many years in advance of his own time. Beneath 
the spreading branches of a noble elm-tree, long known as 
the "treaty-tree," he made a famous treaty with the Dela- 
wares, ' ' that was never sworn to and never broken. ' ' Never 
before had the Indians been so well treated by a European. 
When the treaty was made, the treaty-tree was several miles 
from Philadelphia; to-day, the monument that marks the 
place stands in one of the busiest manufacturing portions 
of the city. Philadelphia was from its foundation a pros- 
perous town. During the two years of Penn's stay in the 
province, several hundred families made it their home. In 
fourteen years it had above twenty thousand inhabitants, 
and it continued to be the largest city in the country till 
the close of the eighteenth century. 

As long as Penn remained in the province, everything 
progressed smoothly. With his departure, disputes began 
between the colonists, represented by the assembly, and 
the representative of Penn, called the deputy governor. 
Many elements entered into this contention, which con- 
tinued with increasing animosity till the American Revolu- 
tion put an end to the proprietary government. The 
governor would not have the proprietary lands taxed, yet 
demanded money by taxation of other lands. As time 
went on, an anti-proprietary party arose, in favor of trans- 
forming Pennsylvania into a royal province. 

Foremost among the leaders of this party was Benjamin 
Franklin. He had come to Philadelphia from Boston, in 
1723, a penniless youth of seventeen; had worked as a 
journeyman printer; had become a prosperous publisher 
and a man of great influence in the city. While pursuing 
his printing business he had given profound attention to 
scientific studies, especially to electricity and heat, and was 
the first American to win a European reputation. Long 
before the Revolution, he had won a name in science and 
letters that few Americans have equaled and none have 
surpassed. His experiments, like that with the kite, were 
very simple, but they may be said to have benefited the 
whole world. Philadelphia was a quarter of a century old 
when Franklin was born. When he died there, in 1790, 



88 NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE [1753 

his name had been identified with every important move- 
ment in the hfe of the city for sixty years. 

From the foundation of the province slavery existed in 
Pennsylvania, but few of the Quakers were slave-owners. 
The German portion of the population was less scrupulous. 
Almost from the beginning of the colony, some members 
of the Society of Friends expostulated against slavery, 
and in 1688, in the Germantown meeting, a remonstrance 
against it was read. Franklin early joined the opponents 
of slavery, and on his death-bed he wrote a powerful ap- 
peal for abolition. Ten years before (1780) the state of 
Pennsylvania passed the famous act providing for the 
gradual abolition of slavery, but the last slave did not dis- 
appear till nearly seventy years later. The act of 1780 was 
the first of its kind, and was followed by similar acts in New 
York and New Jersey. 

In western Pennsylvania lay the disputed boundary land 
between England and France. The disputants met on the 
Ohio River, and a war followed which ended with the disap- 
pearance of New France from the map of America. The 
Quakers were not of the war party in the provinces. Mean- 
while, the French and Indians were devastating the western 
settlements. With the actual outbreak of the French and 
Indian war, in 1753, the influence of the Quakers declined, 
and the political control of the colony fell into the hands 
of the Scotch- Irish, the Germans and others who believed 
in war. offensive and defensive. The Friends never re- 
gained their political influence. While the French and 
Indians were committing their depredations, the deputy 
governor, carrying out his instructions from the Penn 
family, did nothing to put the province in a state of de- 
fense that would cost the proprietor anything. 

Though the Penns owned land in the province valued at 
ten million dollars, they would not sufTer it to be taxed like 
other lands. The assembly refused to exempt the proprie- 
tary lands. . Why should the burden of defending the 
colony fall wholly on the colonists? Why should the Penn 
lands not be rated like other lands? The dispute waxed 
bitter ; the governor grew more obstinate ; the assembly 
more resolute. It finally, in 1757, sent Franklin to Eng- 



1767] MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 89 

land as its agent to present the cause of the people and to 
protest against the discrimination demanded by the pro- 
prietors. This was the beginning of Franklin's diplomatic 
service, and from this time till the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion, and during the nine years that followed, he was in 
England or France as the representative of American inter- 
ests. His protest against the exemption of the Penn lands 
was successful, as were nearly all his diplomatic efforts. 

Between his appointment as agent of _ Pennsylvania, in 
1757, and his return in 1785 as late minister plenipoten- 
tiary to France, two great events of world-wide importance 
had occurred, in both of which he bore a conspicuous part. 
France had retired from America and the United States 
had become an independent nation. Franklin's life (1706- 
1790) was almost coextensive with the eighteenth century. 
As he was intimately associated with all the great events in 
our history from 1740 till his death, his biography has not 
only the unique interest of presenting the development of 
a man of genius, but also in large measure of recording the 
history of America in the eighteenth century. 

The Pennsylvanians were famed for their fertile farms; 
their heavy crops of wheat; their ships, built on the Dela- 
ware, and their industry and thrift. Philadelphia divided 
the commerce of the country with Boston and New York. 
As in New England, the people depended on themselves 
for their cloth as well as for their food. A few of the 
wealthier class imported articles of luxury. Penn's charter 
had been made with slight knowledge of the lay of the land. 
The southern boundary became from the first a matter of 
dispute between Penn and Lord Baltimore. By the charter 
it lay along the fortieth degree of north latitude, but Penn 
discovered that this would locate Philadelphia and Dela- 
ware Bay in Maryland. As the intent of the charter was 
to give Pennsylvania a suitable frontage on the bay, Penn 
asked for a new survey, which was completed in 1767, by 
Mason and Dixon, who spent four years at the task, and 
marked the two hundred and eighty miles of the southern 
boundary by stones one mile apart. The Penn arms were 
cut on the north side, the Baltimore arms on the south 
side, of every fifth stone. This boundary extended along 



90 NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE [1637 

the parallel of 39° 43', and has been known ever since by 
the names of its surveyors. 

Politically it was the boundary between free and slave 
soil. When the Northwest Territory was created, in 1787,* 
this political line was practically continued down the Ohio 
from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi. It may be truly said 
that Mason and Dixon located one of the principal political 
landmarks in our history, but to these skilled surveyors the 
line was only a. boundary between two vast proprietary 
estates in the American wilderness. 

In 1740, Dr. Franklin and a number of eminent citi- 
zens of Philadelphia organized a charitable school which in 
a few years developed into the College of Philadelphia, and 
later (1790) into the University of Pennsylvania. 

Stimulated by the efforts of France, Holland, and Eng- 
land to plant colonies in America, Sweden, in 1637, deter- 
mined to secure a portion of the New World. The enterprise 
of colonization was undertaken for the Swedish government 
by Peter Minuit, late governor of New Netherland, who 
in 1638 brought a small colony to the Delaware and began 
a settlement where the city of Wilmington now stands. 
The place was named Christina, after the Queen of Sweden, 
and a good report was taken back to the home government. 
But trouble was in store for the colony. 

The Dutch claimed the valley of the Delaware, and 
expostulated with Sweden. At last, in 1655, Governor 
Stuyvesant, under instructions from his government, sailed 
from New Amsterdam and speedily made conquest of New 
Sweden. The Swedes were forced to swear allegiance to 
Holland, and Stuyvesant sailed back again. Ten years later 
New Netherland became New York, and the Swedes on the 
Delaware found themselves English subjects. For a time 
this part of the country was in the province of New York. 

When William Penn received his grant of Pennsylvania 
from Charles II., in 168 1, it cut off what had been called 
New Sweden from the Duke of York's province, and Penn, 
anxious to secure the advantages of Delaware Bay, purchased 
the country from the duke and organized it as the three lower 
counties on the Delaware. They continued a part of Penn- 

*There was an earlier act, 1784, but it was practically inoperative. 



1703] DELAWARE 91 

sylvania twenty-one years, but in response to repeated 
requests of their inhabitants, Penn, in 1703, permitted a 
division, and the three lower counties on the Delaware 
became a separate province, known as Delaware. A pro- 
prietary government like that in Pennsylvania was estab- 
lished. The laws of the two provinces were more alike 
than those of any other two of the thirteen. 



CHAPTER IX 

MARYLAND; THE CAROLINAS; GEORGIA 
1629-1776. 

It will be remembered that the first grants of land in 
English America were to the London Company in the south, 
and the Plymouth Company in the north, and that a neu- 
tral or middle zone was left ungranted. This was destined 
to become for a time the property of several distinguished 
individuals who enjoyed the favor of the king, and these 
introduced a different form of government from that in 
Virginia or New England. In spite of famines, Indian wars, 
rivalries, and religious and civil commotions, the colonies 
had prospered, and great interest was manifested in Eng- 
land, by eminent men, to secure grants in the unoccupied 
region between Virginia and Connecticut. 

While the events already narrated were going on, four 
English colonies were established in this hitherto vacant 
region. First to receive a grant was George Calvert, Lord 
Baltimore, a Catholic gentleman who for many years had 
been active in colonial enterprise. He had been a member 
of the London Company, and had attempted to start a 
colony at Newfoundland, but was forced by the climate to 
abandon his enterprise. He had seen much of America, 
and in 1629 had explored the land lying to the north of 
the Potomac, and was delighted at the prospect it unfolded. 
This region was as yet no-man's-land, and Lord Baltimore 
asked it of the king. Charles I. readily consented, and gave 
his favorite a charter conveying extraordinary powers and 
privileges. All the land within the grant, to which Balti- 
more had already given the name Maryland, in honor of the 
queen, Henrietta Maria, was given to him and his heirs for- 
ever. Baltimore was given the title "Lord Proprietary of 
Maryland," with full power to coin money; to grant titles 
of nobility, but not of the name or order in use in England; 

92 



1634J LORD BALTIMORE 93 

to make laws for his colony, either personally or by calling 
representatives of the settlers; to establish courts of justice; 
to grant pardons, and to maintain an army and navy. The 
King of England could not do all these things. 

In return for his charter, Lord Baltimore was to pay the 
king one fifth of all gold and silver ore found in Maryland — 
a condition already familiar to us in the Virginia charters; 
and also to pay annually to the king two Indian arrows. 
Considering that there was no gold and silver ore in Mary- 
land and that Indian arrows could be had for the asking, 
the Lord Proprietor could not complain of the rent. His 
purpose was not personal gain, but one of the noblest that 
could animate a man, to found a refuge for persecuted Eng- 
lish Catholics. These had long been the object of a perse- 
cution even more bitter than that directed against the 
Puritans. No Catholics had as yet been favored by a grant 
in America. Baltimore, as Lord Proprietary of Maryland, 
was free to establish what churches he pleased, but he could 
not make laws contrary to those of England, therefore he 
could not prevent Protestants coming to his province. 
With extraordinary liberality, he invited Protestants and 
Catholics to settle in Maryland. Before the charter was 
signed, Baltimore died, and it was made out to his son, Cecil 
Calvert, known as the second Lord Baltimore, who was 
imbued with the same ideas as his father and sought to 
carry them out. 

The old idea held by Raleigh, Gorges, and Mason, that 
a profitable tenantry and rent-roll could be established in 
America, possessed Calvert, who proceeded to grant large 
tracts of land, each of a thousand acres and more, to men 
of wealth, who were empowered to rule as lords of the manor, 
holding courts, both civil and criminal, and collecting rents 
from their tenantry. A few of these ancient manors, as for 
instance that of the Carrolls, much decreased in size, remain 
in the possession of the descendants of the original owners. 
The wealthiest of these built commodious mansions, exten- 
sive servants' quarters, capacious barns, homes for the ten- 
antry, and a chapel. The conditions of life in America soon 
demonstrated the impracticability of Baltimore's idea of 
manors, tenantry, and rent-rolls. 



94 MARYLAND; CAROLINAS; GEORGIA [1649 

In 1634, about two hundred colonists arrived, of whom 
the greater part were Protestants; but some twenty were 
Catholic gentlemen, who took up great estates. Leonard 
Calvert, brother of the proprietary, led this migration. A 
settlement was begun as St. Mary's. Its religious wants 
were first supplied by consecrating an Indian wigwam as a 
place of worship. This was the first Roman Catholic church 
in an English colony in America. It could not lawfully 
have been erected in England, or in any other English 
colony than Maryland, and it may be questioned whether 
Lord Baltimore's charter, strictly construed, permitted him 
to do this thing. Religious toleration was a novel idea at 
this time, but it was practiced from the beginning in Mary- 
land, though we shall see that it was much interfered with 
later on. Lord Baltimore encouraged all Christians to 
come. 

Puritans and Friends came. Annapolis, at first called 
Providence, was founded in 1649, by Puritans whom Gov- 
ernor Berkeley had expelled from Virginia. Some Quakers 
were banished from Maryland because they refused to take 
oath of allegiance to the proprietary; but as they objected 
to oaths of any kind, they would have been banished from 
every country in Christendom at this time. Allegiance by 
afifirmation was not yet thought of. Lord Baltimore soon 
called an assembly, and in 1649 it enacted a law permitting 
freedom of worship to all who believed in the divinity of 
Christ. This excluded Jews and Unitarians. 

In later years, when Jews located in the province, though 
they were allowed to worship in their own way, neither they 
nor Unitarians were allowed to vote. Not until 1823 was 
the constitution of Maryland changed so as to abolish reli- 
gious qualifications, and not until 1826 were Jews allowed 
both to vote and to hold ofifice. Thus it will be seen that 
complete religious toleration and political equality did not 
prevail in Maryland until nearly two hundred years after its 
founding. Quakers were opposed to oaths in any form, and 
simply affirmed. Affirmations were declared legal in Mary- 
land by amendment to the constitution in 1795 and 1798. 

When the Constitution of the United States was made, 
in 1787, public sentiment had so changed in this country, 



1650] DISSENSIONS 95 

that an affirmation was considered as binding as an oath. 
The President of the United States may swear or affirm 
when he takes his solemn obh'gation as chief executive. 
During colonial days, except in Rhode Island, affirmations 
were not considered legally binding. Thus it will be seen 
that though Maryland began with a spirit of toleration, it 
was the toleration of the seventeenth century, and quite a 
different spirit than that now prevailing in our country. 

Though Lord Baltimore had received his grant from the 
king, there were those in Virginia who, under claim that 
Maryland lay within the boundary of Virginia, resisted his 
authority. Religious prejudice and selfishness were largely 
at the bottom of all this. Kent Island was held by one 
William Clayborne, as a trading-post, under royal license, 
before the Maryland charter was granted. Baltimore tried 
to evict Clayborne, and a petty war followed. The English 
courts sustained Lord Baltimore, but Clayborne bided his 
time. During the war between Charles I. and Parliament, 
Clayborne attempted to regain the island. The civil war 
in England caused a serious breach of public order in 
America. Bold and unscrupulous men took advantage of 
the times to push their own interests. St. Mary's was taken 
by one Richard Ingle, a Puritan captain turned pirate, who 
broke up the settlement, and the governor filed to Virginia 
for his life. At the same time, Clayborne plundered and 
destroyed many of the rich Catholic manors, burned the 
Catholic churches and missions, and scattered the people. 
Father White, who had come over with the first settlers, 
and his associates were roughly seized, put in irons, and 
sent to England on charge of treason. All this was done 
under the excuse that the Protestants of Maryland were 
suffering persecution from the Catholics. Clayborne's real 
motive was revenge and gain. 

In England there was much clamor against Lord Balti- 
more and his "Papist province" ; the troubles in Maryland 
were only the reflection of sentiment in England. Lord 
Baltimore acceded to all this outcry by appointing a Protest- 
ant governor of Maryland. Already the Maryland assembly 
was in control of the Protestant party. Charles I. was now 
dead, and England was governed by a Puritan Parliament, 



96 MARYLAND; CAROLINAS; GEORGIA (1692,1716 

which appointed a commission of three, one of whom was 
Claybornc, to take control of Maryland and organize a new 
government. Toleration had resulted curiously in the prov- 
ince. The Catholics numbered about one-fourth of the 
population, and most of the remainder were Puritans who 
controlled the assembly. Instigated by the commission, 
the assembly, in i 654, enacted a law putting all Roman 
Catholics outside the protection of the laws of England. 
This was a premium on persecution, robbery, and violence. 

But the Puritan Assembly did not stop with Catholics; 
freedom of worship was denied to Quakers, Baptists, and 
Episcopalians. When this action of the assembly came 
before Cromwell, he refused his approval. "Liberty of 
conscience," said he, "is a natural right." Thus the great 
chief of the Puritan Commonwealth vetoed the law. Crom- 
well speedily restored religious freedom for all Christians 
in Maryland, but like most great men he was more liberal 
than his party. The Maryland Catholics were held in sus- 
picion by their Protestant neighbors for many years, all 
through the years of the Commonwealth, and through the 
reigns of Charles II., of William and Mary, and of Queen 
Anne, and indeed of the four Georges. 

The province was rent and almost ruined by all this 
dissension. In 1692, the year when William and Mary 
granted a new charter to Massachusetts, the king determined 
to put an* end to the troubles of Maryland. He canceled 
Baltimore's charter and appointed a royal governor. The 
assembly made the Church of England the established 
church of the province, and the Roman Catholic form of 
worship was forbidden. On the loth of August, 17 16, 
members of assembly and all oflficials were required to be 
qualified as in England. This meant that they must sub- 
scribe to the test oath, an oath that excluded Roman 
Catholics from office and which had to be taken by all 
officials in other colonies as well as by those in Maryland. 
Roman Catholics were compelled to pay tithes to support 
the established church, in whose teachings they did not 
believe; and also to pay taxes in support of the govern- 
ment in which they could have no part, as voters or office- 
holders. This state of things, in spite of constant protests 



1663] THE CAROLINAS 97 

from the Catholics, continued in Maryland until the war for 
independence. 

Some eminent Catholic families, of which Lord Balti- 
more's was one, became Protestant. In 171 5 the province 
was restored to Lord Baltimore, and continued in the posses- 
sion of him and his descendants sixty-one years, when by 
the Revolution the government passed into the control of 
the people of Maryland. 

Among the favorites of Charles IL was Lord Clarendon, 
and to him and seven others he granted, in 1663, the vast 
tract from Albemarle Sound in the north to the St. John's 
River in the south, and westward from ocean to ocean. It 
was taken from Virginia, and the king gave to it his own 
name. The proprietors were empowered to make laws for 
their province, and religious freedom was to be granted at 
their discretion. 

Clarendon, who had a speculative mind, drew up an 
elaborate plan for the regulation of his province, and he was 
assisted by John Locke, one of the most famous of English 
philosophers. The plan was called the "Grand Model," 
and was supposed to be well adapted to a colony in the 
wilderness. It was to continue the unchangeable law of 
Carolina. For twenty years the proprietors tried to carry 
it out in practice, but at last, convinced of its uselessness, 
they abandoned it. 

It created permanent classes of society, attaching dis- 
tinctive privileges to each class. It rested on the feudal 
system which it attempted to introduce. It gave no hope 
to the poor man. At its head were the eight proprietors 
of the colony, who expected to receive great profits and 
honor from their rights and privileges. 

Only one provision of the Grand Model is suggested by 
anything in America to-day. It provided for the division 
of Carolina into tracts of a thousand acres each, a sort of 
public land system, which may have suggested the system 
adopted by Congress almost a century and a quarter after- 
ward. 

During its brief authority, the legislature of the colony 
conformed to it in many ways. The proprietors were 



98 MARYLAND; CAROLINAS; GEORGIA [1729 

required by their charter to call an assembly, known as a 
parliament, the only instance of the title in this country. 
The laws permitted freedom of worship, but required all 
above the age of seventeen to belong to some church, which 
meant in Carolina, preferably, the Church of England, for 
this was established by law. Other denominations were 
permitted, but they drew their support from the voluntary 
gifts of their members, and not, as did the established 
church, from the public taxation. 

As the law made provision for oaths, but not for af^r- 
mations, Quakers were excluded from the privileges of the 
colony. The colony did not realize the expectations of its 
founders, and in 1720 they surrendered it to the crown as 
a royal province. Nine years later it was divided into North 
and South Carolina. The disabilities of the Quakers were 
removed, but as in most of the colonies, Roman Catholics 
were excluded from voting or holding office. 

Founded as Carolina was while Europe was racked by 
cruel religious wars, its early settlers included many who 
migrated to escape persecution at home. Distinguished 
among these were many Huguenot families whom the 
cruelty and folly of Louis XIV. forced to leave France. 
Like the Puritans, these were refugees, and they laid the 
foundation of a great state in the New World. Rich plan- 
tations were soon smiling with indigo and rice, with corn 
and wheat. Massive pine forests that had to be cleared 
supplied turpentine, pitch, and tar, all profitable articles of 
export. At first only the wild rice was known, but in 1694 
the East India rice was introduced, a small quantity having 
been obtained quite by accident from a sea captain who had 
touched at Savannah. It soon displaced the wild variety, 
and before half a century had passed became the chief 
article of export. 

The culture of indigo was also introduced, almost acci- 
dentally. A young girl, a planter's daughter, set out some 
roots in 1742 for ornament. The plant proved adapted to 
the climate and was rapidly introduced as a crop. At the 
time of the Revolution it ranked with rice as a staple of 
the country, and may be said to have dictated one of the 
compromises of the Constitution of the United States — the 



1732] GEORGIA 99 

right of Congress to pass a tariff law and the prohibition on 
Congress to abolish the slave trade before 1808. 

The Carolina settlements at first were along the great 
bays and sounds of the Atlantic and the rivers that flow 
into them, but gradually the plantations were extended 
farther west toward the mountains. Here dwelt one of the 
fiercest and most powerful of the Indian tribes, the Tusca- 
roras. The colony was not twenty years old before Indian 
wars broke out. The Tuscaroras held sway as far north as 
Pennsylvania and continually cut off settlers. At last Caro- 
lina and Virginia joined their forces, a bloody war followed, 
and the Indians, in 17 14, were so seriously crippled that 
most of the tribe migrated to New York and there joined 
the Five Nations, while a few others mingled with tribes 
near their old home. West of the mountains. North Caro- 
lina owned a vast domain, which at the time of the Revo- 
lution was named Washington County, and now comprises 
Tennessee.* 

At this time imprisonment for debt filled the jails of 
England with many worthy persons who were the victims 
of misfortune. There seemed no way of ameliorating their 
condition by law. At last a number of philanthropic per- 
sons, chief of whom was James Oglethorpe, planned what 
they thought would be a permanent remedy, a colony in 
America for the relief of those who, leaving a debtors' prison, 
might have a chance to begin life anew. Appealing to 
George II., they were granted, in 1732, a vast region in the 
southern portion of South Carolina, along the Spanish 
border. This grant was for twenty-one years, and extended 
from the Savannah westward to the "South Sea," as the 
Pacific was still called. 

But Oglethorpe had other objects than the relief of poor 
debtors. He would found a home for the persecuted Prot- 
estants of France, Italy, and Spain, and also make the new 
colony a bulwark against the Spaniards in Florida. Pro- 
vision was made in England to assist the worthy poor to 
emigrate. The new colony was named in honor of the king. 

* It was for a time called Franklin, or Frankland, after Dr. Franklin. 
See the American Historical Magazine for January, i8g6, Nashville, 
Tennessee. 

L.ofC. 



loo MARYLAND; CAROLINAS; GEORGIA [1739 

By the charter, the government was to be in the hands of 
Oglethorpe and his associates, as trustees for the colonists, 
till at its expiration the colony should become a royal 
province. Thus the settlers had nothing to do with the 
direction of their public affairs. This proved a cause of 
discontent. 

Oglethorpe, like all the founders of colonies in America, 
wished to dispose of the soil, subject to a perpetual rent, 
which, though small, only fourpence a year for a hundred 
acres, caused dissatisfaction. Another regulation caused 
even greater discontent. The land, as in England, was to 
descend to the oldest son, to the exclusion of other chil- 
dren, but a law was passed in 1739 permitting inheritance 
to daughters when there were no sons. The colonists 
soon discovered that they were governed by law-makers 
not of their own choosing, and by laws not of their own 
making, and that until the twenty-one years of the charter 
passed, they could not secure a title to their lands. All 
were held in trust by Oglethorpe, his associates, and their 
successors. The trustees displeased the colonists by some 
of their regulations, although these would now be considered 
very good. They forbade the importation of alcoholic 
liquors, as they wished the colony to be temperate and 
orderly; but the colonists complained because, they said, 
the prohibition cut them off from a profitable trade in rum 
with the West Indies and drove that trade to other colonies. 

The trustees also forbade African slavery, as they wished 
the colony to be self-supporting. The colonists got partly 
round this difficulty by importing white "apprentices," 
whose labor was sold to them for a term of years. The 
trustees rather favored this, as it increased the white and 
ultimately the free population, and strengthened the colony 
against the Spaniards. 

Great hopes were placed on the culture of the mulberry 
and the production of silk. The climate was thought to 
be well adapted to the industry. Olive, orange, and lemon 
trees and grapevines were imported from Italy, and it was 
confidently said that Georgia would soon furnish England 
with silk, wine, and tropical fruits. But the colonists knew 
very little about silk-culture or wine-making. Their silk 



1749] SLAVERY loi 

was coarse and could not compete with the French and 
ItaHan silks in the English market; nor could the sour 
Georgia wine compete with the rich wines of Italy, France, 
and Spain. Though on the seal of the colony the trustees 
represented silk-worms spinning their cocoons, they soon 
discovered that the silk industry would require many years 
of labor and experiment before it would attain perfection. 
The colonists complained that they were discriminated 
against in the English market, and became discouraged. 

Like William Penn, Oglethorpe laid the foundation of 
a city as the chief town of the colony, and like Philadel- 
phia, located it on a noble river. He gave the city the 
name of the river. Savannah, and the town flourished from 
its beginning (1733). But instead of becoming a city of 
silks and wine it was destined to become a city of cotton. 
The inducements to settle in Georgia brought a various 
people: Germans from Salzburg, Scotchmen from the High- 
lands, Huguenots from France, and Irishmen from the 
north of Ireland. Most of Georgia was a wilderness, the 
home and hunting-ground of the Creeks, Choctaws, and 
Chickasaws; the settlements were along the Savannah. 
With the Indians the settlers carried on a profitable fur 
trade, compared with which the other exports of the colony 
were of little value. 

The settlers called loudly for negro slaves. Along the 
South Carolina border, however, they hired negroes for life, 
and thus practically introduced slavery. Finally, in 1749, 
the trustees, much against their will, opened the colony to 
the slave trade and the importation of rum. Immediately 
the industries of Georgia changed. Large plantations began 
the cultivation of indigo and rice, the last a native product 
of the country. The West India trade became great and 
profitable. The Georgians thought that they had an equal 
chance with the other colonies. The wilderness to the west 
was rapidly taken up in large plantations, and there was 
some immigration from the Carolinas and Virginia. 

Among the first who came to Georgia were the brothers 
John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. They were young men, fresh from 
Oxford, and zealous to preach the gospel. Charles was 



I02 MARYLAND; CAROLINASi GEORGIA [1749 

secretary to Oglethorpe. They found great difficulty in 
pushing missionary work among the Indians because of 
their ignorance of the Indian tongues. Returning to Eng- 
land, they began a religious movement which has been felt 
over the whole world. "All the world is my parish," was 
John Wesley's motto. The brothers did much in England 
to stimulate immigration to Georgia and to other parts of 
America. 

About the time of the introduction of slavery into 
Georgia, the colony was visited by the famous preacher 
George Whitefield. He had made a circuit of the colonies 
and had moved multitudes by his eloquence. The people 
of Philadelphia built a large edifice for his services when he 
might visit the city.* Whitefield was among the first to 
advocate the establishment of orphan asylums. He started 
one in Savannah, and bought a large plantation, conducted 
it by slave labor, and gave the profits to the asylum. He 
favored slavery because, he said, the African slave was better 
off on an American plantation than in savage Africa. 

His friend Franklin did not agree with him. The Wes- 
leys, too, became powerful opponents of slavery, and urged 
the doctrine of emancipation upon all their followers. When 
the Constitution of the United States was made, it was said 
by one who signed it, Nathaniel Gorham, that the Quakers 
and the Methodists were the only people in the country 
who would not own slaves. 

Oglethorpe was a distinguished soldier, and turned his 
military knowledge to the benefit of the colony and the 
home government. He made treaties with the Indians and 
built forts along the Spanish border. St. Augustine, not 
far from the border, was the headquarters of the Spanish in 
Florida. The Georgians complained that their runaway 
slaves found a refuge in Florida; the Spaniards claimed 
that all Georgia was Spanish soil. Military expeditions 
were frequent, and the colonists to the south were in almost 
constant fear of Indian and Spanish depredations. 

After trying eighteen years to manage the colony, the 
trustees gave up discouraged, and assigned all their rights 

* The building was soon after acquired for the Charity School, out of 
which grew the University of Pennsylvania. 



1776] VERMONT 103 

to the crown. Oglethorpe and his associates had attempted 
an impossible thing. Self-government was the only kind 
of government that could prosper in America. Georgia 
proved this. After all these years, during which the trus- 
tees had charge, less than a thousand families had settled 
in the colony. 

Georgia was the last of the colonies, and it became a 
royal province in 1752. The king then appointed a gov- 
ernor and the people chose an assembly. Every freeman 
of the age of twenty-one who owned land or paid taxes or 
followed a mechanic's trade could vote, but as in other colo- 
nies, the right was denied to Roman Catholics. The new 
government satisfied the people little better than the old. 
The assembly and the governor disagreed, as in other royal 
colonies; the Stamp Act displeased the Georgians as much 
as it displeased the people of New England and the middle 
colonies, and when the Revolution broke out, they were 
equally devoted to the cause of liberty. General Ogle- 
thorpe was the only founder of a colony who lived to see 
it become a commonwealth and a part of the American 
Union. 

From the founding of the first English colony, Virginia, 
in 1607, to that of the last, Georgia, in 1733, was a hundred 
and twenty-five years. During this time thirteen colonies 
were established, extending from New France in the north 
to New Spain in the south, and laying claim to the land 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, then called the South Sea. 

By 1776, a few settlements had been made in western 
Virginia (Kentucky) and in western Carolina (Tennessee). 
At this time Vermont, claimed by New Hampshire, Massa- 
chusetts, and New York, transformed itself into a free and 
independent community. Unlike the settlements in New 
Spain and New France, those in English America were not 
made as mere military occupations. Every English-speak- 
ing colony was a collection of permanent homes. English 
settlers, unlike the French or the Spanish, did not plan to 
make a fortune in the New World in order to spend it in 
the Old. This home-making habit of the English bred a 
permanent interest in American colonial affairs, quite dis- 
tinct from that in affairs strictly English. The English 



I04 MARYLAND; CAROLINAS; GEORGIA [1776 

colonists looked upon their local governments as permanent 
institutions possessing rights clearly granted by the charters. 

Love for England was strong, and every English colo- 
nist was proud of his birthright. England encouraged this 
feeling of patriotism and colonial pride. Yet the colonists 
were left much to themselves. Not so the settlers in New 
France and New Spain. There liberty was unknown, and 
government was impersonated in the military head of the 
colony. New France and New Spain were French and 
Spanish camps, nothing more. The English colonies were 
prosperous, contented, liberty-loving, home-like settle- 
ments. As the English government was the best in the 
world, so its colonies were the freest, happiest, and most 
prosperous. Self-government, a spirit of independence, and 
general prosperity were inevitable in the colonies in spite 
of any shortsightedness in Great Britain's policy toward 
them. The reason lay in the isolation of the colonies from 
Europe and in the character of the people themselves. 

The settlements extended along the Atlantic coast from 
the Kennebec to the Savannah, but inland not over an 
average of forty miles. They were tide-water colonies. 
The wilderness was thus close to the water's edge. Along 
the frontier lurked the savages, ever instigated by the 
French to keep up an incessant war. Thus the colonies 
were in common danger, and this tended to unite them. 
Indeed, common danger was the first great cause of colo- 
nial union. Within the English settlements about a million 
and a half of people were to be found. 

Westward and northward lay the power of France, deter- 
mined to contest farther English advance. Thus at the 
middle of the eighteenth century the issue was clearly 
before the colonies. Had they reached their limit? Were 
they to be excluded from the Mississippi Valley? Were 
the Alleghany Mountains to be forever their boundary-line? 
Was France or England to possess the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi? Let us first see what the French had been doing 
in the great valley. 



CHAPTER X 

ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR FOR THE 
CONTINENT 

1535-1763 

From the days when Cartier (1535) and Champlain 
(1608) began exploring the continent, and named a part of 
it New France, the relations between the French and the 
English in America had been hostile. In the St. Lawrence 
basin the French had strengthened themselves, as they 
thought, for all time. Quebec, a fortification by nature, 
was bristling with French cannon and was the Gibraltar of 
America. This was the chief French stronghold ; the mili- 
tary capital of France in the New World. From it went 
forth missionaries and soldiers to win the continent for 
France. All missionaries were explorers and map-makers. 
They were the eyes of France spying out the land. 

During all the years of English colonization, from the 
planting of Jamestown to the founding of Georgia, these 
missionaries and other resolute Frenchmen were traveling 
over the Mississippi Valley, selecting points for future 
fortification, conciliating the Indians, and mapping the 
country. Some of them visited the English colonies, and 
reported their condition as accurately as they reported that 
of the tribes in the Northwest. Thus France knew more 
about the English in America than England knew about 
the French. The chief causes of hostility between the two 
nations were their difference in religion, their treatment of 
the Indians, and their claims to the Mississippi Valley. 

The French had been about sixty years in the valley of 
the St. Lawrence before they began the exploration of the 
greater valley to the southwest. Down to 1660 New France 
extended only over the St. Lawrence basin. But the fur 
trade brought news to Quebec of a rich country beyond, 
and in 1672 the governor sent two remarkable men to ex- 

105 



io6 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1673 

plore, Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet started on their 
eventful journey from the westernmost French trading- 
post, Michilimackinac, in May, 1673. Even the Indians 
warned them not to make the venture. Taking six men 
with them, they sped over the lake westward in two canoes; 
entered Green Bay, breasted the rapids of the Fox River, 
waded the marshes at its head, crossed a narrow portage, 
and paddled down the Wisconsin through a region never 
before visited by white men. For a week they passed on, 
feasting their eyes on the glorious freshness of the New 
World clothed in the flower and foliage of early summer. 
Wider grew the river till at last it joined a greater which 
flowed to the south. 

It was June 17th, a day destined also to mark another 
great event in American history a century later. South- 
ward they turned their canoes, and now began looking for 
the sea. Wider grew the river and more turbulent, for 
the snow and ice of the north had melted and swelled the 
waters. But they never feared. They knew they had 
found the great river of which the Indians had told them. 
On they paddled; passed great rivers that joined the main 
stream on the east and on the west. This must be the Ohio, 
which they called The Beautiful; that must be the main 
stream because it was so large, but we know that it was the 
Missouri they were passing. And so on they went toward 
the gulf till they reached the place near where De Soto had 
discovered the great river, thirty-two years before, probably 
not far from the mouth of the Arkansas. Then they turned 
their canoes about and paddled back to Lake Michigan. 
When they reported their wonderful voyage to the governor, 
he sent word to the king that New France was explored 
southward over twelve hundred miles. This canoe voyage 
was one of the most wonderful in human history. Only 
men of extraordinary character would attempt it. Its 
importance cannot be fully estimated. In recent years the 
state of Michigan has placed a statue of Marquette in the 
capitol at Washington. A city bears the name of Joliet 
and another that of Marquette. The two men may be 
called the great French pathfinders. 

But Marquette and Joliet had not reached the sea, and 



i68i] LA SALLE 107 

New France must know no other boundary. In 1678, 
Robert de La Salle set forth to find it. He and his com- 
panions started from Quebec, continued southward to Lake 
Erie, and near Detroit they built and launched the Griffin, 
the first ship on the Great Lakes. Then they turned toward 
the northwest, over Huron, through the straits, westward 
to Green Bay, along Marquette's course, southward along 
the western shore of Lake Michigan. He crossed the port- 
age to visit a camp of Indians on the Illinois near the present 
site of Peoria, and built a fort to which he gave the pathetic 
name of Fort Crevecoeur (broken heart). Leaving a small 
garrison under Henri de Tonti, with orders to build another 
ship that might carry the expedition to the sea, La Salle 
went back to Quebec for supplies. But on his return to the 
fort he found it ruined and deserted. Had Tonti gone down 
the Illinois? Had he set out for Quebec? In search of him 
he passed down the river as far as the Mississippi, but con- 
vinced that Tonti had not been there, he turned back and 
encamped for the winter on the St. Joseph River. 

At last, in November, 168 1, he could wait no longer, and 
turning again southward he began his eventful journey. 
He crossed Lake Michigan, entered the Chicago River, 
carried his canoe over the portage to the Illinois, and was 
soon on the Mississippi. Marquette had passed this way 
in June; La Salle reached the river in February, but he 
was not terrified by the vast mass of floating ice and trees. 
Boldly he kept on till he came to the sea. He had accom- 
plished the great object of his journey. New France now 
extended from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle 
was the first European to reach the gulf from the north. 
Standing at the mouth of the Mississippi, he unfurled the 
Lilies of France, claimed all the country watered by the 
Mississippi and its tributaries as French soil, and to the new 
region he had found he gave the name Louisiana, in honor 
of Louis XIV. Now began the toilsome journey back to 
Canada. La Salle retraced his course, and with military 
sagacity selected sites for fortifications. He knew that his 
mere claim of Louisiana could not hold it against England 
and Spain. Forts must be built at commanding points and 
colonies must be settled about them. Nor was this all. 



io8 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1684 

The Indians must be won over and be made firm allies of 
the French. This in brief was La Salle's policy, and he 
proceeded to carry it out. In December, on his way back 
to Canada, he built a fort, which he called St. Louis, on the 
Illinois, near the present site of the town of Ottawa. This 
would keep the Indians in order and also guard the portage 
to Lake Michigan. 

For many years his route was the French highway from 
Louisiana to Canada. It passed through the Chicago River. 
In 1703 the French Academy published a splendid map of 
North America, which shows the results of the wonderful 
explorations of the ' ' pioneers of France in the New World. 
La Salle returned to France full of enthusiasm. In 1684 
he started with many colonists for the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi. There he planned to build a fort and to close the 
great river to the Spaniards. But by some error in navi- 
gation, he missed the Mississippi and landed at Matagorda 
Bay, in Texas. Here a fort was built. Fever attacked the 
colonists. They quarreled among themselves. At last La 
Salle turned his face toward Canada, and with a few com- 
panions sought the familiar waters of the Illinois. We 
know that there was treachery and that the brave La Salle 
was murdered by his companions. Little did his murderers 
know that in striking him down they had dealt New France 
a fatal blow. 

While Champlain was founding New France at Quebec, 
John Smith was at Jamestown, laying the foundations of 
Virginia; Henry Hudson was exploring the Hudson; the 
Dutch were settling New Amsterdam (New York City); 
the Pilgrims were settling Plymouth, and Winthrop and 
his associates were founding Boston and Massachusetts. 

While Marquette and Joliet were on their wonderful 
voyage down the Wisconsin, the Mississippi, and return, 
the Friends, or Quakers, were settling New Jersey at Bur- 
lington; the first settlers of Carolina were building their 
houses on the Ashley and Cooper rivers; Governor Berkeley 
was oppressing the Virginians, and Bacon was brooding 
over some plan for their relief. 

While La Salle was floating down the Mississippi in 
search of the sea, William Penn was receiving a charter for 



1689] THE FRENCH WAR 109 

Pennsylvania, where seventy years later the first blood was 
shed in the final contest between France and England for 
the Mississippi Valley. Thus from the days of Champlain 
(1608) to those of La Salle (1684) France was exploring the 
valley and erecting a few forts to hold it. England was 
sending thousands of settlers to her colonies to build homes. 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, the Carolinas, and 
Georgia claimed westward to the South Sea, thus covering 
nearly all claimed by the French in the Mississippi Valley. 
How was the approaching contest likely to end? It will 
be noticed that the period of French exploration coincides 
with the seventeenth century. 

In less than five years after La Salle's death, the con- 
test began. New France now consisted of three parts: 
Acadia, in the northeast, consisting of the greater part of 
Maine and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; New France, 
on the St. Lawrence basin; and Louisiana, the valley of 
the Mississippi. The contest began in 1689, when Louis 
XIV. of France took up the cause of James II., whom the 
English people had forced to flee from his throne and whom 
William and Mary had succeeded by parliamentary title. 
Thus France and England were at war, and the people of 
North America were involved in the contest. In English 
America it was known as King William's War; in French 
America it was known as a war for Louis XIV. and the 
defense of Acadia. But the statesmen of England and 
France knew it was the beginning of a great struggle that 
should decide which nation should have the mastery in 
America. 

France began the war in 1689. Count Frontenac, a dis- 
tinguished soldier and governor of New France, was ordered 
to destroy the English colonies. Accompanied by his 
Indian allies, he promptly moved down upon New England 
and New York, and for six years ravaged their frontier. 
This was the time when Leisler called the first American 
Congress to assemble quickly at New York City and unite 
in a plan for the protection of the country (1689-90). 
Happily for the English, the powerful Five Nations were 
between them and Canada and were unappeasable foes of 
the French. While Frontenac and his Hurons were burn- 



no ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1C96 

ing Schenectady, butchering the settlers at Sahnon Falls 
and at Exeter, New Hampshire, the Iroquois were ravaging 
the French towns on the St. Lawrence and burning their 
victims in sight of the garrison at Quebec. But Quebec 
was impregnable, at least to Indians, as were Montreal and 
Port Royal. These three strongholds poured forth com- 
panies of French and Indians as a hive gives forth swarms 
of bees. Until the three strongholds should be taken, the 
English colonies would be quite at the mercy of the French. 
Expeditions against each were attempted. One succeeded. 
Sir William Phipps, in 1690, with a fleet from Boston, de- 
stroyed Port Royal. But Quebec and Montreal laughed 
him and his fleet to scorn. So the French had things much 
their own way, and for seven years took prisoners, burned 
and scalped the settlers, and laid waste the whole English 
frontier. 

Among the towns they ravaged were York (1692), Castine 
(1694), Maine; Durham, New Hampshire, and Haverhill, 
Massachusetts (1697). Now Haverhill is about thirty miles 
from Boston; might not the French and their Indian allies 
advance farther south and the terrifying yell of the savages 
be heard in Salem and New Haven? Nor were matters less 
terrible in New York. The French, in 1696, led by Fronte- 
nac himself, had surprised the powerful Onondagas, and the 
way was now open to all the towns along the Hudson. 
But in the following year the treaty of Ryswick was signed, 
and the war closed. By the treaty, each country stood just 
as it did before the war. Port Royal was given back. But 
only a few years. The treaty settled nothing. When the 
war was resumed, Anne was Queen of England, and the 
war, therefore, was known to English America as Queen 
Anne's War. All the old horrors were now repeated. 
French and Indians swept down upon the English frontier. 
Towns were burned. Hundreds of men, women, and chil- 
dren were scalped, burned at the stake, or dragged into a 
horrible captivity. Quebec defied the English. Port Royal, 
in 1 7 10, again fell into their hands. For twelve years the 
contest raged. Then came the treaty of Utrecht, in 17 13, 
and peace. 

This time things were not suffered to remain unchanged. 



1699] NEW FRANCE in 

France surrendered Acadia and all claims to the Hudson 
Bay country; Port Royal was renamed Annapolis, after the 
queen, and Acadia was named Nova Scotia. Among the 
boys of Boston at the time of the treaty of Utrecht was 
one just seven years of age, named Benjamin Franklin. 
His father and mother were very intelligent people, and 
were accustomed to discuss public events before their chil- 
dren at the dinner-table. The surrender of Acadia was a 
great event. The news of the treaty was celebrated in 
Boston with bell-ringing, bonfires, and parades. As Frank- 
lin's father explained the meaning of the celebration to his 
children, he little imagined that his youngest boy was to 
bear an active and decisive part in the final struggle between 
France and England for the possession of America, and that 
afterward he should be foremost in bringing about Ameri- 
can independence. France had lost Acadia, but she 
resolved to hold New France and Louisiana at any cost. 
This meant a military occupation of the two great valleys — 
the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. 

Quebec and Montreal guarded the St. Lawrence, but 
only two feeble stockades guarded the entire valley of the 
Mississippi: Fort St. Louis, built by La Salle on the Illi- 
nois; the other. Fort Biloxi, built by Iberville, a young 
French ofificer who, in 1699, attempting to carry out La 
Salle's plan, landed in Mobile Bay, and after some time 
spent in exploration, finally returned to the coast. At the 
time of the treaty of Utrecht, these two feeble forts, nearly 
a thousand miles apart, were the military defenses of Lou- 
isiana. France henceforth lost no time. From 17 13 not 
a day passed that did not record the activity of the French 
in Louisiana. Priests and soldiers explored its hidden 
recesses and mapped its rivers, its mountains, and its port- 
ages. Not a year passed that did not witness the erection 
of a French fort or a stockade. 

The French plan was simple. Beginning at Quebec and 
Montreal, a chain of forts, within supporting distance, 
should be built along the entire English frontier, and thus 
prevent an English invasion of Louisiana. 

The plan was thoroughly carried out. The French 
frontier coincided with the hisfhlands that divide the streams 



112 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1700 

emptying into the Atlantic from those emptying into the 
St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, the Ohio, the Mississippi. 
Nor was the fortification of the frontier all that was done. 
France planned to regain Acadia, and as an initial step, 
Louisburg was built on the island of Cape Breton. The 
French military engineers at this time were the most famous 
in the world, and their skill was exhausted in the building 
of the new stronghold. They boasted that Louisburg was 
the strongest fortification in America. 

While France was dotting the country with forts, English 
colonization was drawing to a close. Georgia was founded 
in 1732, with boundaries westward to the South Sea, and at 
least three French forts were within its confines. All the 
other French forts stood on ground claimed by the Caro- 
linas, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, 
Here France extended her fortifications as rapidly as 
possible. 

Though boldly invading the Indian country, the French 
had little difficulty with the Indians. This was due to their 
Indian policy, which respected all the traditions, the rights, 
and most of the wishes of the savages. The hunting- 
grounds of the Indians were undisturbed; their land was 
not converted into orchards and corn-fields. They were 
supplied with guns and ammunition, and also with an enemy 
abounding in spoil — the English. The French explorers 
and missionaries accepted Indian life as they found it and 
freely made themselves at home in the wigwams. Soon a 
generation of half-breeds, more savage than the savages, 
more at home with them than the French, was springing 
up in New France. These vagrants were joined by many 
young Frenchmen who preferred the freedom of the forest 
to the restraints of civilization. 

Thus there grew up a class of French foresters, coiircurs 
de bois (wood-runners), as they were called, who formed a 
bond of connection between the settlements along the St. 
Lawrence and the wild tribes of the Huron wilderness. 
Unlike the English, the French did not try to enslave the 
Indians, nor to make them work, but treated them as 
hunters in their employ. The great chiefs they treated 
with consideration ; loaded them with gifts and attached 



1744] THE INDIANS AND THE FRENCH . 113 

them as closely as possible to their interests. Thus it 
followed that where French forts were thickest, the Indians 
were most devoted to the French. About these forts the 
various tribes gathered and gave the priest and the fur- 
trader opportunity for active labors. 

Save for a short time in Pennsylvania, the English were 
never at peace with the Indians; they abhorred their cus- 
toms, scorned their rights, and never tolerated social rela- 
tions with them. The plowed field was ever getting larger, 
the hunting-grounds ever getting smaller. The English 
were not fur-traders like the French. They desired houses, 
lands, cattle, ships, commerce, political discussions. More- 
over, no two colonies pursued quite the same Indian policy, 
in contrast to the fixed policy of the French. So the 
Indians said, "All Frenchmen alike, no two Englishmen 
alike." The Indians, from the first, hated the English, 
except as they used them as allies, as did the Five Nations. 
When the final struggle came betweeen France and Eng- 
land, for the control of America, all the tribes of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley quickly joined the French. 

It was only by most skillful management on the part of 
Sir William Johnson, governor of New York, that the 
Senecas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras, three of the Five 
Nations, did not join the French. In fact, the Senecas 
did join them. Many years later, Cornplanter, a great 
chief of the Senecas, told Washington that at the time of 
Braddock's defeat it was the fire of the ambushed Senecas 
that cut down the British officers. Again and again Corn- 
planter fired at Washington, but at last he was persuaded 
that the brave Virginian carried a charmed life and desisted. 
Later in the war the Senecas concluded that they had joined 
the losing side, and abandoned the French ; but had the 
choice rested with the Indians of the Mississippi Valley 
which power should be suffered to remain there, America 
would now be New France. 

Early in 1744 war broke out again. On this side the 
Atlantic it was called King George's War, after George II. 
On the other side, it was known as the "War of the Spanish 
Succession." Again the French took the offensive and 
entered upon what they hoped would be the reconquest of 



114 . ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1750 

Acadia. Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, seeing the 
drift of affairs far more clearly than did the ministry, 
advised that Nova Scotia be saved. Louisburg must be 
taken. Strange to say, Shirley's plan was carried out. 
With some four thousand men, the flower of New England, 
with fourteen armed ships and a hundred transports, he 
sailed for Louisburg in March, 1745 ; on the 17th of June, 
ever a great day in New England, he captured the fortress. 
The thing seems almost incredible. Less incredible was 
the conduct of the ministry three years later when peace 
was declared ; Louisburg was given back to the French. 

France meanwhile adhered steadily to her plan. She 
built more forts, and chiefly on the Ohio, on the Allegheny, 
at Presque Isle, at Chautauqua Lake, and at Niagara. Lest 
any doubt might arise that this part of the country was 
French soil, official notices on sheets of tin were nailed to 
the trees, and more elaborate claims, stamped on plates of 
pewter, were buried in the ground. These plates were 
planted along the Ohio and the Allegheny. Several have 
been found. One, not many years ago, was discovered at 
Franklin, Pennsylvania, by some boys while bathing in 
French Creek. ^ Doubtless others will be found as the 
waters of the Allegheny, the Ohio, the Muskingum, the 
Miami, the Conewango, and French Creek, receding from 
their overflow in the spring, wash away the banks, forsake 
old courses and open new ones. Most of these plates were 
placed by De Bienville, a young officer sent by the governor 
of Canada for the purpose. It will be noticed that these 
plates were buried on the line along which the English and 
French were soon bound to come into collision — western 
New York, western Pennsylvania, and western Virginia. 

But something more was needed to hold the country 
than tin plates tacked on trees and leaden ones buried at 
the confluence of streams. A chain of forts was ordered 
to be erected in the Allegheny Valley. De Bienville exe- 
cuted the order promptly. In 1752, one was built at 
Presque Isle (now Erie). From here a portage was opened 
southward fifteen miles to French Creek, and a fort was 

*The late S. J. M. Eaton, D.D., of Franklin, told mc that he saw 
this plate. 



"1754] THE FRENCH ON THE OHIO 115 

built called Fort Le Boeuf, now Waterford. Farther down 
the creek Fort Michault, or Venango, was built, on the site 
of the city of Franklin.* 

News of the arrival of the French on the Allegheny soon 
spread through the colonies. It was of serious moment to 
Virginia, for that colony claimed the region. Governor 
Dinwiddle and other members of the Ohio Company were 
greatly excited, because the new French operations were 
on the very ground which King George had recently granted 
to them. The governor acted promptly. He dispatched 
George Washington, then in his twenty-second year, to 
make careful investigation of the country ; to find out all 
he could about the French forts and their basis of supplies, 
and then give to the French commandant a formal letter 
ordering him to withdraw from the country, 

Washington at once set out. As a messenger from a 
colonial governor to an obscure French ofificer in a small 
fort in the wilderness, began his long public service which 
remains unparalleled in history. Arriving at Fort Le Boeuf, 
he delivered his letter to its commandant. Saint Pierre, 
who, recognizing the gravity of the demand, gave Washing- 
ton a polite reception, but said he would send his letter on 
to Quebec, that the governor, the Marquis Duquesne, might 
read it and give orders. Meanwhile, Saint Pierre would 
hold Fort Le Bosuf and the French would continue to 
execute their plans. So Washington hastened back to 
Williamsburg, while a French courier bore his letter 
to Canada. Dinwiddle knew from the message sent him 
that the French had no intention of retiring. The Ohio 
Company must take possession of its claim and hold it till 
reinforced. This meant a military occupation of the dis- 
puted valley. 

As quickly as possible, two militia companies were 
mustered in at Williamsburg to march to the Ohio, to take 
possession and to hold the country against the French. 
An, advance party of forty arrived at the forks of the Ohio, 
where Pittsburg now stands, about the middle of February, 
1754, and at once set to work building a fort. For two 

*The railroad from Brockton to Mayville, on Chautauqua Lake, 
passes through the ruins of one of these French forts. 



ii6 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1754 

months they labored, till suddenly a strong force of French 
and Indians from Fort Le Boeuf surrounded them and 
demanded their surrender. About half of the company 
had returned to Virginia, and the remainder could not 
defend the place. They were suffered to withdraw; the 
French then took possession, completed the fort, and called 
it Fort Duquesne. 

The Virginians hastened homeward, and a short dis- 
tance away, at the present site of Cumberland, Maryland, 
met reinforcements under Washington. The Virginia 
Assembly had meanwhile appropriated ten thousand pounds 
for the defense of the Ohio country, and already equipped 
some troops, and Washington, the lieutenant-colonel, taking 
seventy-five men, had set out to reinforce the Virginians at 
the Ohio. Suddenly he met them in full retreat, bringing 
the news that the French were in possession. 

Washington had no orders and no intention to retreat, 
and he decided to push forward, to erect a new fort and to 
hold the country. At the Great Meadows he threw up 
earthworks, and called them Fort Necessity. Suddenly 
the French were reported near. Washington surprised 
them. Jumonville, their leader, was killed, and only one 
Frenchman escaped. Abandoning Fort Necessity, he 
pushed on again toward the Ohio; but a superior force of 
French and Indians was now reported just ahead. Wash- 
ington fell back to Fort Necessity, where he was quickly in- 
vested. He had few men and insufficient supplies. Decid- 
ing that he could not hold the fort, he surrendered it, on 
the 4th of July, and was allowed to march away with the 
honors of war. The final struggle for the possession of the 
Mississippi Valley had now begun, with the French in pos- 
session of Western New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. 

In the old State House in Philadelphia hangs a flag with 
the device of a snake cut in pieces, each piece named for 
a colony, and beneath, the motto: "Join or Die." The 
device originated with Franklin, and first appeared in the 
Pennsylvania Gazette at the time when the French were 
taking possession of the Ohio Valley, Virginia and Penn- 
sylvania were most interested in this act, for it was on their 
territory, but Franklin knew that the act affected every 



1754] THE ALBANY CONGRESS 117 

colony. It was time for them to unite in common defense 
against the French and Indians. The suggestion was oppor- 
tune, because the British government, through the Lords of 
Trade, the permanent royal commission in charge of 
colonial affairs, had directed that the colonies send dele- 
gates to a congress at Albany in order to make a treaty 
with the Six Nations, and thus unite them with the English 
in the impending struggle. The colonies north of the Poto- 
mac responded. Among the delegates from Pennsylvania 
was Franklin, who submitted a plan of colonial union that 
would bring the resources of the colonies to bear against 
the French, and also bring the colonies into a continental 
government, dependent upon the crown, but quite free in 
all local affairs. 

It failed of adoption, but its failure brought the subject 
of a colonial union for the first time before representatives 
of all the colonies. The idea was educational to the whole 
country. Some of its provisions were incorporated later 
in the Articles of Confederation and in the Constitution 
of the United States. When the Albany congress adjourned, 
late in July, 1754, its members were convinced that some 
kind of a colonial union must be formed. The congress 
agreed, quite unanimously, that Franklin's plan was a good 
one. But the purpose of the congress had been accom- 
plished. A treaty with the Six Nations was now made and 
the question of colonial union must abide events. 

Washington's expedition to the Ohio began the final 
struggle which has been called by all English writers, as 
by the colonists, the French and Indian War. It really 
was a Franco-English war in America, with the Indians 
divided. The Six Nations joined the English; all the 
other tribes, from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, 
joined the French. England now realized what the colo- 
nists had known for many years, that the struggle was for 
the possession of America. The colonial troops were not 
trained alike, and no colonial officer was above the rank of 
a colonel in the British army. Washington entered the war 
as a lieutenant-colonel in the Virginia militia. There were 
colonial generals, but of the militia only. 

The British government thought little of the miHtary 



ii8 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1755 

capacity of its colonial officers, and less of the value of 
colonial militia. England, like her neighbors on the Conti- 
nent, had been almost steadily at war for a hundre'd years. 
She had trained troops and many able officers, but her sol- 
diers were accustomed to a settled country; to regular 
maneuvers, and to fighting in order of battle. England was 
now to test her power in America, fighting with Indians 
and Frenchmen in the wilderness. Edward Braddock was 
appointed major-general and commander-in-chief of the 
English forces in America. At the same time the home 
government ordered that colonial officers should have no 
rank when serving with officers holding the king's commis- 
sion. Washington at once retired from the service, and 
many other colonial officers did the same. The British 
ministry wished it plainly understood that the war was to 
be fought by regular troops, officered by British officers. 
This certainly was not a happy beginning. 

The commander-in-chief, Braddock, arrived in Virginia 
in March, 1755, bringing with him a plan for conducting 
the war. He summoned the governors of Massachusetts, 
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to meet 
him at Alexandria, and there told them what he was going 
to do and what they must do. The British troops that had 
come with him were to overpower the French, with the 
assistance of the colonial militia. The campaign on paper 
was clear and easy enough. The French were to be attacked 
at four points. Braddock himself would march to Fort 
Cumberland, cross into Pennsylvania, and rout the French 
at Fort Duquesne. Three other expeditions were to set 
out — one from Nev/ York to Quebec, by the route of the 
Hudson, Lake Champlain, and Crown Point; another 
from Boston to Louisburg, and thus cut off assistance from 
this quarter to Quebec and Crown Point, and a third 
from Albany to Lake Ontario, cutting off and destroying 
all the French forts to Niagara. So there would be very 
little left of the French when all this was done. 

Among the Americans who met Braddock at Alexandria 
was Franklin, who was at the time the deputy postmaster- 
general of the colonics, and who was the best known and 
the best informed man in the colonies. Thackeray has 



1755] GENERAL BRADDOCK 119 

made a travesty of him in his story of the Virginians. 
Franklin hinted to Braddock that it would be difficult to 
reach Fort Duquesne with regular troops, unaccustomed to 
a wilderness, and ventured a few suggestions about Indian 
fighting. Braddock laughed at the advice, and with many 
oaths declared that he would fetch the army there without 
difificulty and capture the fort. "To be sure, sir," replied 
Franklin, "if you arrive well before Duquesne with these 
fine troops, the fort can probably make but a short resist- 
ance." 

Then he told the general something about the American 
way of getting there. The Indians would be concealed in 
the deep woods; they would find the scarlet uniforms of 
the English soldiers a splendid target, and the British line 
would be "cut like a thread into pieces." But this both 
amused and incensed Braddock. "These savages," said 
he to Franklin, "may be indeed a formidable enemy to raw 
American militia, but upon the king's regular and disci- 
plined troops, sir, it is impossible to make any impression." 

The general invited Washington to serve on his staff. 
This greatly pleased him ; he thought he would now see 
how a campaign should be conducted. It was early May. 
The troops were sent on to await the general at Will's 
Creek. Braddock followed a fortnight later, traveling in a 
coach. He briefly visited Lord Fairfax at Greenway Court, 
and hastened on to join the army. He had never seen such 
roads. He cursed them for being no better. Washington 
suggested that wagons must be abandoned, as a road must 
otherwise be cut for them in the wilderness. Braddock 
resented the idea as an intrusion, and stuck to his wagons. 

The result was that hundreds of soldiers were deployed 
to make a road, and the wagon-train, loaded down with the^ 
baggage of the of^cers, stretched out some four miles. As 
the army moved deeper into the wilderness, hundreds of 
its foes, unseen, were watching for a time to strike. The 
Virginians were set to cutting the road for the regular 
troops and the wagon-train. Everything must move in 
military order. A place called Little Meadows was now 
reached. Braddock was amidst entirely new surroundings. 
He began to see his blunder. He condescended to ask 



I20 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1755 

Washington's opinion, which was to send the rangers ahead 
to reconnoiter. One called the "Black Rifle," a famous 
Indian fighter, promptly came forward and offered his ser- 
vices. Braddock turned upon him in a rage, saying he 
would rely on regular troops. Then the woodsman and his 
rangers set their faces toward their homes on the Juniata 
and left Braddock to his fate. 

Rejecting all advice, he pushed on. Early on the 9th 
of July, 1755, he moved forward, with twelve hundred reg- 
ular troops and ten cannon, crossed a narrow ford and 
entered a ravine. Here De Beaujeu, a young captain from 
Fort Duquesne, with two hundred and thirty Canadians 
and nearly three times as many savages, met the English. 
At a signal from Beaujeu the Indians vanished behind rocks 
and trees. The English fired; the French captain fell. Then 
followed such a scene as no British soldier had ever beheld. 
The brave regulars were suddenly caught amidst an unseen 
foe that was filling the air with fearful yells and pouring 
in a continuous fire. The British officers held the men 
together and would not let them take shelter behind the 
trees. 

"Forward!" was the order, but given in vain. The men 
were dazed, and too panic-stricken to run. Nearly all of 
the officers were struck down. Washington's coat was cut 
by four bullets; two horses were shot under him. At last, 
after doing all he could to retrieve his blunder, Braddock 
was shot down. Then the survivors broke into wild flight. 
Meanwhile, the savages could restrain themselves no longer. 
The unheard-of booty before them had stopped their fire. 
Braddock was carried from the field. A few officers, Wash- 
ington, and the Virginians only were left. The regular 
troops were dead, or had vanished in flight. As the dying 
general realized the extent of the disaster, he could only 
groan. He passed away four days after the battle, saying: 
"We shall know better how to deal with them another 
time." 

The principal effect of Braddock's defeat was the demon- 
stration to Washington, Franklin, and many more Ameri- 
cans that a British general might make fearful blunders and 
that a British army in America might be beaten. On the 



1757] WILLIAM PITT 121 

French and Indians, who had been awaiting Braddock's 
coming with dread, his defeat had a stimulating effect. 
They were sure that New France and Louisiana were 
impregnable. Along the frontier of Virginia, Maryland, 
and Pennsylvania, the settlers heard of the defeat with 
terror. It meant the horrors of an Indian war. 

The great plan which Braddock had brought over came 
to naught, except the English victory at Crown Point, 
where Sir William Johnson, with Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut militia, defeated the French under Dieskau, in 
September, 1755. Among the colonial ofificers present 
were John Stark and Israel Putnam. The English signal- 
ized their victory by calling the lake after the king — Lake 
George. The expedition planned against Niagara got as 
far as Oswego only, and returned. But Braddock's defeat 
was the most terrible disaster of all. 

Though all this fighting had been going on in America, 
England did not declare war against France till May, 1756, 
nearly a year after Braddock's arrival in Virginia. France 
declared war in June, at once took the aggressive, and sent 
Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, to command all her 
troops in America. He was already a famous soldier, and 
doubtless the ablest governor New France ever had. Dur- 
ing the next two years Montcalm carried the war into the 
colonies. It seemed as if New York and New England 
would soon be at the mercy of the French and their Indian 
allies, and great was Montcalm's success; even the Six 
Nations began to waver in their fidelity to the English. 

At this critical time in the fortunes of Great Britain 
and her colonies, William Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham, 
was called, in 1757, to direct public affairs, and his genius 
at once checked disaster and changed the course of events 
in America. His statesmanship rescued the colonies from 
their French and Indian foes and powerfully contributed to 
their later independence. His first step was to select men 
fit to carry out his plans. Louisburg, Quebec, and Fort 
Duquesne were the three most important points in New 
France, and must be taken. 

In June, 1758, Louisburg was invested by Admiral 
Boscawen, whose fleet bore brave troops under General 



122 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1757 

Jeffrey Amherst. The third brigadier was James Wolfe, 
who was only thirty-one, and had been in the army since 
he was thirteen. It was the brilliant action of Wolfe and 
his Highlanders that forced the surrender of the stronghold. 
England had regained Acadia, and Pitt had found a man 
who could win victories. Pitt was the first English states- 
man who knew American geography. Washington had 
declared Fort Duquesne to be the key to the Mississippi 
Valley. But Ticondcroga was the key to the Atlantic 
plain. In July, an English army of fifteen thousand, under 
Lord Howe, fiercely beset it, but Montcalm repelled it, with 
fearful loss. Pitt knew that if Quebec and Duquesne were 
taken, Ticonderoga, like twenty other French outposts, 
would be abandoned. The campaign against Fort Du- 
quesne was intrusted to Joseph Forbes, but his rapidly 
failing health put the expedition in charge of Washington. 
He knew the way to Duquesne. On the 25th of Novem- 
ber, the French set fire to the fort, and in the glare of the 
flames fled down the Ohio. Washington planted the Eng- 
lish flag on the ruins, and changed the name to Fort Pitt, 
in honor of the great minister. Washington was now 
twenty-six. Nor were his military services his only glory. 
He was chosen a delegate to the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses, which a few weeks later publicly thanked him for 
his services to his country. Overwhelmed with surprise, 
he tried in vain to express his thanks. "Sit down," said 
the speaker; "your modesty is equal to your valor, and that 
surpasses the power of any language I possess." 

He had been instrumental in breaking the power of the 
French in the great valley. He now retired from his five 
years' military service to Mount Vernon, and gave his mind 
to farming, to an ever increasing correspondence with lead- 
ing Americans in other colonies, and to a watchful attention 
to the great events going on in America. 

Pitt now concentrated military operations on Quebec, 
and called Wolfe to conduct them. Parliament voted 
twelve million pounds for the conquest of New France, 
which was to be attacked at all points. The forts from 
Niagara westward were one vast objective, but Quebec, the 
French Gibraltar, was the chief one. With great sagacity, 



I757J WOLFE AND MONTCALM 123 

Pitt conciliated all the colonial assemblies and made the 
navigation laws as light as he could. The effect was imme- 
diate. Every colony supported his policy. He was the 
first and almost the only English minister who was univer- 
sally popular in the colonies. Wolfe, like Pitt, was a genius, 
and the simplicity of his plans was equaled only by their 
success. 

The direct approach to Quebec is up the St. Lawrence. 
Hitherto all expeditions had tried to reach it overland, by 
the way of the Hudson and Lake George. By June the 
ice was well out of the river and the English fleet was at 
the walls of the fortress. On the 26th the army disem- 
barked. Below Quebec the river is a whirlpool for miles 
and the shore is precipitous. For nine miles above the 
city steep walls continue, and every landing-place was then 
a fortress. July and August passed, and every attempt 
against the place failed. Then Wolfe, though broken by 
fever and years of bad health, made a more careful inspec- 
tion of the approaches. He discovered a cove — ^^now 
called by his name — above the city, and saw a pathway, "so 
narrow that two men could hardly march in it abreast," 
leading to the plain above. There he could see the French 
tents and he could hear the tread of their pickets. This 
obscure Indian trail was the entrance to Quebec. With 
wonderful skill, he deceived the French to the last moment. 

On the night of the 12th of September he led a picked 
company up the steep path, and all night long the army 
followed. At dawn, Montcalm was astonished to see the 
British army in possession of the plain, drawn up in order 
of battle, and on higher ground than the fortifications of the 
city. The level land is known as the Plains of Abraham. 
A fierce battle at once began, and Wolfe led the charge. 
Montcalm was everywhere, cheering on his troops. Wolfe 
was struck three times, and at last, dying, was carried to 
the rear. "They run, they run!" cried an ofHcer. "Who 
run?" asked Wolfe. "The French give way everywhere," 
was the reply. Starting up, the dying hero gave a few 
brief orders "to cut off the fugitives," and sinking to the 
ground, murmured, "Now God be praised, I die content." 
Montcalm was struck twice, and the surgeon told him he 



124 ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR [1762 

could not live long. "So much the better," he replied; 
"I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." And 
his words proved true. 

One of the decisive battles of the world had been fought. 
America was to be English, not French. During the sum- 
mer, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Niagara, and Presque Isle 
fell, and Montreal followed in 1760. The triumph of Eng- 
land and her colonies was complete. They were freed from 
the terrors of Indian ravages. The assemblies, the towns, 
the churches, all gave thanks for the great delivery, but not 
until the tenth day of February, 1763, was peace assured 
by treaty. The seventy years' struggle between France 
and England for America was at last ended. 

The results of the war were many and far-reaching. 
France retired from America, surrendering her possessions 
to England and Spain. The dividing-line between these 
two powers passed midway down the Mississippi River. 
All to the east, save two islands in the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence, was now English territory ; all to the west was 
Spanish. The city of New Orleans fell to Spain. Florida 
was exchanged for Havana, which the English had cap- 
tured during the war, and remained English territory till 
1 783. Thus the map of North America was greatly changed. 
The name Louisiana remained, but that of New France had 
vanished forever. 



CHAPTER XI 

WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? 

1763-1774 

The treaty of 1763 gave England an undisputed title to 
a greatly extended area in America, consisting of three 
regions: The thirteen colonies, inhabited chiefly by Eng- 
lishmen; Canada, inhabited by the French and Indians; 
and the country from the Allegheny to the Mississippi, 
from Florida to Hudson Bay, inhabited by hostile Indians. 
The thirteen colonies had well-organized governments, but 
Canada was a wilderness, save the region along the St. 
Lawrence, organized as the Province of Quebec, which 
extended southward to the crest of the Appalachian high- 
lands dividing New York and New England from Canada. 
Florida, which for a hundred years had been shifting its 
boundaries, was now organized as two provinces: East 
Florida, comprising the present state east of the Appala- 
chicola, and West Florida, containing also a part of the 
present area of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 
Georgia was extended to the St. Mary's River. 

Believing that the colonies and the three provinces gave 
ample room for settlers, the king reserved the remainder of 
the country, that west of the Alleghany Mountains, exclu- 
sively for the Indians. Beyond the highlands that divide 
the headwaters of Atlantic streams from the headwaters 
of streams flowing into the Mississippi, no white man 
should be suffered to go, and all settlers within this region 
should at once return to the colonies, to the Floridas, or to 
Quebec. The Indians henceforth should be unmolested 
and their country be forever closed to the whites — at least 
so the king's proclamation read. It will be noticed that 
the "proclamation" line coincides exactly with the frontier 
which France had been trying to establish for seventy years. 
Would the king's will prove any stronger than a line of 

125 



126 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1763 

French forts? By the treaty of 1763, Spain was acknowl- 
edged master from the Pacific to the Mississippi, and from 
the tropics northward, as California might extend. France 
had been driven from the continent ; but might she not 
attempt to reconquer her lost domain? England must do 
more than issue proclamations and make new provinces on 
paper; she must hold the new country with English soldiers. 
The ministry thought that ten thousand would be enough, 
and decided to distribute them from Canada to Florida. 
The thirteen colonies were to have their share. 

Thus English America was to be protected by regular 
troops sent from England, and in return for this protection 
the colonies should pay a portion of the expense involved. 
This plan seemed very fair to king and Parliament. They 
reasoned that it was the colonies which had been chiefly 
benefited by the overthrow of the French in America. 
England had been at war almost continuously for a hundred 
years, and her public debt had risen in consequence to gigan- 
tic proportions, upward of one billion pounds sterling, a 
sum which seemed too great ever to be paid. The people 
of Great Britain were heavily taxed to meet the interest on 
this debt and to carry on the government. The American 
colonies were part of the empire. Its welfare was theirs. 
England had just closed a long struggle for their benefit. 
The French and Indians would no longer ravage the settle- 
ments. A few regular troops in America would prevent 
any sudden attack by France or Spain. Meanwhile the 
colonies would have peace and prosperity. 

During the last two wars. King George's (1744-48) 
and the French and Indian (1749-56-63), the laws of trade 
and navigation intended to produce a revenue in America 
had been openly violated. Smuggling had quite wiped out 
revenue; but now the old laws should be revived, amended, 
and be executed strictly. The Americans were making a 
good deal of money on rum, which they manufactured out 
of the sugar and molasses brought from the West Indies. 
Here a slight impost tax would be productive, and would 
not be felt. Englishmen at home paid a stamp tax, small 
but productive, and not burdensome; the Americans should 
pay one also. Why should Englishmen in America be 



1763] NEW TAXES 127 

favored more than Englishmen at home? So England 
decided to levy new taxes in America. 

The navigation acts, or tariff laws, of the seventeenth 
century were now revived and amended and their execution 
attempted. But first, smuggling must be stopped. This 
meant the patrol of the Atlantic coast for nearly two thou- 
sand miles, from the St. Croix in the north to the St. Mary's 
in the south, with armed vessels that would now be called 
revenue cutters. But the Americans did not consider smug- 
gling a crime, or even an offense. True, it violated English 
law, but they believed the law to be bad. If the smug- 
glers were caught, they must be tried and punished. Vio- 
lations of the revenue laws by ancient custom were tried 
before the admiralty courts. 

To assist the naval officers. Parliament created vice- 
admiralty courts in America which should try all persons 
caught violating the navigation laws. The vice-admiralty 
judges were appointed by the king, and were to try all 
offenses without a jury. Now the right of Englishmen to 
trial by jury was at least as old as King Alfred. At once 
the Americans protested against the form of procedure in 
the new law courts, which, by depriving them of the bene- 
fits of trial by jury, was a violation of the ancient and 
undoubted rights of British subjects. 

To tax sugar and molasses was not a new idea. The 
old tax of sixpence a gallon on the one and five shillings 
a hundredweight on the other was levied, in 1733, on all 
brought to the colonies, except from the British West 
Indies, and the assemblies had repeatedly protested against 
the act. Now for the sixth time Parliament re-enacted 
the law, but cut down the tax on molasses twopence, and 
added to the tariff list indigo, coffee, white sugar (the old 
tax had been only on brown sugar), wines from Spain and 
Portugal, and all goods from France or the East Indies. 
If the Americans did not wish to pay the duty, they could 
buy their supplies in England. But the Americans pro- 
tested, saying that the law cut them off from trading with 
all parts of the world and favored the merchants and mo- 
nopolies of England. 

Stamp duties were a new thing in America. A strong 



128 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1765 

minority party in Parliament opposed them, not because 
of opposition to the prospective revenue planned by the 
Grenville ministry, but because of the proposed method of 
raising it. All through the French wars the assemblies 
had levied taxes, had collected the revenue, and had ex- 
pended it in support of the crown. Pitt's popularity in 
America was largely due to his recognition of the exclusive 
rights of the assemblies to levy taxes, and he now took the 
same position in the long parliamentary debate on the Stamp 
Act, and with Pitt, in the minority, were John Wilkes and 
Colonel Barre. As soon as the news of the purpose of the 
Grenville ministry reached America, it produced great 
excitement. The colonies had business agents in London, 
among them Dr. Franklin, Vv^ho represented Massachu- 
setts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. He was intimate with 
many of the chief men of England. He devoted himself 
to the cause of the colonies, and protested against the pro- 
posed act. It passed by a large majority, March 22, 1765, 
and was to go into effect November 1st, following. Mean- 
while stamps and stamped paper should be prepared, should 
be taken to America, and there be sold by agents. These 
should be Americans, should be called "stamp-distribu- 
ters," should be nominated by PVanklin and other colonial 
agents, and should be commissioned by the king. The 
ministry thought that objections to the stamps would be 
lessened if the distributers were Americans. 

Moreover, all money derived from the sale was to be 
expended in the colonies. Like all tax laws, the Stamp Act 
was explicit. Important legal documents were then writ- 
ten, usually, on vellum ; but whether on vellum or paper, 
every one should be taxed from threepence to ten pounds 
sterling. Henceforth only stamped paper, made in Eng- 
land, and sold at prices fixed by Parliament, could be used 
in America for licenses, bills of lading, for playing-cards, for 
bonds and deeds. No one could print a newspaper, a pam- 
phlet, or an almanac save on this stamped paper, and any 
person who violated the law should be tried without a jury 
in one of the new vice-admiralty courts. 

No sooner were the details of the new law known in Amer- 
ica than the indignation of the people broke out. In Boston, 



i76sj RECEPTION OF THE ACT 129 

the vice-admiralty courts had already had some sugar-act 
cases before them, and the denial of a jury to hear them 
had caused alarm. The merchants, the lawyers, the print- 
ers, the newspaper men, were now even more concerned at 
the position Parliament was taking on the Stamp Act. 
Opposition found voice in the resolutions of public meet- 
ings condemning the act. Political clubs were formed call- 
ing themselves the "Sons of Liberty," a name taken from 
a passage in one of Burke's speeches in the House of Com- 
mons, and the organization quickly overspread the country 
and was backed by the merchants. Excitement ran so high 
in Boston, that the Sons of Liberty attacked and pulled 
down the building in which the stamps were stored and 
hung the stamp distributers in effigy. The Stamp Act 
was a dead letter. So formidable was the opposition, the 
stamps and stamped paper were scarcely unpacked. None 
were sold. So complete was their destruction, few were 
even seen by the people. The unbroken packages were 
shipped back to England. Scarcely a specimen can now 
be found in this country. There were Stamp Act riots in 
Providence, New Haven, Newport, New London, Newark, 
and Annapolis. Public meetings denouncing the act were 
held in nearly every principal town. 

The public was not slow to discern the cause of the 
excitement. A royal revenue was all well enough, and 
America was willing to help pay the expense of protection ; 
though the people thought regular troops unnecessary, 
because the colonies could protect themselves; but for 
Parliament to tax America was a violation of the riehts of 
the assemblies. Either these must levy the tax or assent 
to it, but they had neither levied it nor given it their assent ; 
Parliament had ignored them entirely. The assemblies 
directly represented the people, but the people were not in 
any way represented in Parliament. So behind the Sons 
of Liberty and the American merchants and all the leaders 
of opinion, like James Otis and Samuel Adams, in Boston, 
and Patrick Henry, in Virginia, was the right of the assem- 
blies, which, after all, meant the right of the people who 
elected them. What should the assemblies do? 

The Virginia House of Burgesses was in session when 



I30 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1765 

the news of the passage of the Stamp Act arrived. Vir- 
ginia was the oldest of the colonies, and none was more 
loyal, but its existence was now involved. If Parliament 
could pass the Stamp Act, it could supplant the assembly 
and make every law of Virginia. One morning, in May, 
the house was electrified by a speech the like of which had 
never before been heard in America. Rising in his place, 
Patrick Henry presented a set of resolutions which declared, 
briefly, the opinion of the American people respecting 
parliamentary taxation in general and the Stamp Act in 
particular. 

More than a hundred and fifty years before, Virginia 
had been settled by men who possessed and brought with 
them all the privileges and immunities at any time held by 
the people of Great Britain. These rights still belonged 
to the Virginians. The king had solemnly declared in two 
great charters that the people of Virginia were entitled to 
all the rights enjoyed by Englishmen born within the realm 
of England. One right of the people of the colony was to 
be taxed only by their own assembly, and a law levying a tax 
on them and passed without the consent of the assembly 
was a law which they were in no wise bound to obey. 
These resolutions, which stated the case in a nutshell, 
startled many members; but what would the end be? The 
political logic of the situation and Henry's eloquence were 
irresistible, and on the 28th of May the resolutions passed. 

Copies were immediately sent to the other assemblies. 
The Stamp Act was now nine weeks old, and had been dis- 
cussed more or less in every assembly. Massachusetts was 
in accord with Virginia, but went a step further. Its legis- 
lature, believing that the people of the colonies should act 
together, issued a circular letter suggesting that all meet in 
a congress at New York City, to take counsel together con- 
cerning the rights of America. James Otis, on the 6th of 
June, advised calling a congress to meet early in October. 
It should consist of the committees from each colony, 
elected by the lower house of each colonial legislature, and 
should pass judgment on any act of Parliament. Its origin, 
its composition, and its purpose were novel. 

Though Virginia hail set forth the rights of the people 



1765] THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 131 

and Massachusetts had invited the colonies to meet in a 
congress to consider them, all did not respond ; but the 
meeting was assured by the action of South Carolina, and 
chiefly through the activity of John Rutledge and Christo- 
pher Gadsden. New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, 
and Georgia did not choose delegates, though New Hamp- 
shire gave notice that it would sustain the action of the 
congress, and Georgia sent a special messenger to obtain 
a copy of its proceedings. On 5th of October, 1765, the 
congress met, and after a secret session of twenty days, 
issued a declaration of rights, which embodied the sub- 
stance of discussions already heard in the assemblies. But 
the congress went further than a mere repetition 6f old 
resolutions. "Union necessary; dominion fatal," was the 
tone of its discussions. 

For the first time a majority of the English colonies had 
assembled together, and the delegates parted strong political 
friends. A continental spirit was now for the first time 
aroused. In its declaration of rights, issued October 
19th, the congress took a firm stand. The colonies, it 
asserted, were integral and loyal parts of the British Empire, 
and Americans were British subjects. It was their natural 
and constitutional right to pay no tax levied without their 
consent. They were not represented in Parliament, and 
from their geographical situation could not be. They could 
be taxed only by their own assemblies, whose delegates were 
freely chosen by the people themselves. This was remark- 
able language. It signified that the Americans claimed 
that their rights were both natural and constitutional. 

The declaration then concluded with a clear statement 
of colonial grievances. These were of a twofold character, 
some affecting the political rights of the colonies, others 
affecting their industrial rights. Of the first kind was the 
violation of the right of trial by jury, and taxation without 
representation ; of the second kind were the restrictions on 
trade, by the sugar act, the navigation acts, and the Stamp 
Act. 

The country was a unit in its opinion. When Novem- 
ber 1st, the day for the Stamp Act to take effect, came, the 
act was openly violated. No one would use a stamp or a 



132 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1766 

piece of stamped paper. The Americans went further, and 
took the aggressive. All over the country the merchants 
agreed to import no more English goods; to return those 
arrived, and to cancel all pending orders. The women of 
Philadelphia and other towns dressed themselves and their 
families in homespun. British merchants suddenly found 
their trade with the colonies at an end. As might be 
expected, Parliament was flooded with protests from Ameri- 
can assemblies and petitions from British merchants to 
repeal the act. 

Amidst the parliamentary debate on the repeal, the 
friends of Franklin arranged that he should be examined 
at the bar of the House of Commons for information re- 
specting the condition of the colonies. He was called before 
the house on the 3d of February, 1766, and for hours was 
questioned about America. For the first time Parliament 
heard an account of it, complete, clear and accurate. The 
colonies, so Franklin told the house, imported not a single 
article that they could not do without, or make for them- 
selves. With industry and good management, they could 
supply all their wants; nor would it take long to establish 
manufactures among them. Before their old clothes were 
worn out they would have new ones of their own making. 
He made it very clear that the Americans were fully able 
to support themselves. This was astonishing news. 
America ready to be industrially independent of England 
and the rest of the world ! What then of political inde- 
pendence? They might claim that next. To a question 
involving the point, Franklin replied, "In time they may." 
On the 17th of March, the Stamp Act was repealed, after 
a bitter struggle. When, on the following day, George 
HI. signed the repeal, he also signed an act declaring the 
power of Parliament over America to be "supreme, in all 
cases whatsoever." To the end Pitt had opposed the 
Stamp Act, and spoke eloquently for its repeal. Edmund 
Burke, though less outspoken, was also the friend of the 
colonies. 

The Indian Country was largely left to itself when the 
excitement of the French and Indian War subsided. 
England knew little of its Indian domain, and less of its 



1763] PONTIAC 133 

savage inhabitants. A few regular troops were distributed 
among the principal former French forts, but so few and 
feeble were the detachments, a conspiracy speedily spread 
among the Indians to fall at one time upon all the English 
garrisons and to exterminate them and all other Englishmen 
in the country. The moving spirit and chief of this terrible 
plot was Pontiac, an Ottawa Indian, calling himself "the 
King and Lord of all the West." With undaunted cour- 
age, in 1763, he passed from tribe to tribe, beginning among 
the more southerly and passing on to the Senecas, the 
Shawnees, and the Delawares. 

Terrible beyond precedent were the horrors which now 
befell the English garrisons. From the distant West to 
the Proclamation Line there suddenly broke out an Indian 
war which took the English garrisons by surprise. But 
civilization is stronger than savagery. Pontiac's conspiracy 
failed. It was the last far-reaching attempt of the Indians 
to regain their ancient domain. Throughout the war the 
Indians spared che French, among whom were many who 
did what they could to restrain the savages and saved many 
of the English from death. The failure of Pontiac's plan 
opened the West to settlement.* 

Great was the rejoicing in the colonies when news of the 
repeal of the Stamp Act came. Pontiac's conspiracy 
seemed far away. The safety of Detroit, Sandusky, Miami, 
Presque Isle, and Pittsburg seemed to the people on the 
seaboard of less account than the repeal of an odious tax 
law. But when it was realized that Parliament, though 
repealing the law, still claimed the supreme right to tax the 
colonies in all cases whatsoever, rejoicings ceased. Parlia- 
ment had formally declared its right to tax America. The 
assemblies and the late congress had with equal formality 
denied this right. Thus a great issue was drawn. 

In July, 1767, Parliament voted that an American 
revenue was "expedient," levied a tax of threepence a 
pound on tea, and duties on paper, printers' colors, red 
and white lead, and glass, and a board of customs was 
established, with headquarters at Boston, to enforce the 

♦For an account of the first migration west, see the Constitutional 
History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, pp. 211-355. 



134 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1769 

navigation acts. The crown officers in New England had 
entered private houses in search of smuggled goods, show- 
ing as their authority the writs from the vice-admiralty 
courts, called writs of assistance. Otis and others had 
contended that these were illegal, and that by common law 
searches and seizures could be made only upon lawful war- 
rant. Parliament now declared writs of assistance lawful, 
and also suspended the legislature of New York till it should 
comply with the act of Parliament known as the Mutiny 
Act, and furnish the British troops in the colony with 
requisite supplies. 

The tax on tea was a trifle, and the Americans, having 
paid the tax, would yet get their tea cheaper than the 
English. These measures have been called the Townshend 
Acts, after Charles Townshend, who was then at the head 
of the ministry. But though the tax was a trifle, it vio- 
lated the principle on which the Americans conceived colo- 
nial government to be grounded. Resistance, therefore, 
was strengthened. The non-importation agreements were 
more strictly carried out and the assemblies renewed their 
protests. 

The treatment of the New York Assembly alarmed and 
provoked other assemblies. The Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses passed resolutions disapproving that treatment, and 
was promptly dissolved by the royal governor, ever obedi- 
ent to the king's will. The Massachusetts legislature sent 
a circular letter to the other assemblies advocating union 
and a joint action which would protect American rights. 
Hutchinson, the governor, ordered that the letter be recalled; 
the legislature refused, and was dissolved. Nothing thus 
far done by any assembly gave greater offense to the king 
than this letter of Massachusetts, but it met with the 
approval of the other assemblies. Maryland, Virginia, 
South Carolina, and Georgia sided with Massachusetts. 
If the Massachusetts letter irritated the king, the dissolu- 
tion of the assemblies irritated the Americans. They con- 
sidered it a violation of the constitutional powers of the 
king, and later it was made one of the formal charges 
against him in the Declaration of Independence. 

In December, 1769, the idea of a union of the colonies 



i77o] THE BOSTON "MASSACRE" 135 

was brought forward by New York. There should be one 
general congress that should legislate for all the colo- 
nies; but the ministry succeeded in frustrating the scheme 
for the present. "Will not the refusal of all other duties 
(than that on tea) satisfy the colonists?" inquired a member 
of the ministerial party of Franklin. "I think not," he 
replied; "it is not the sum paid in the duty on tea that 
is complained of as a burden, but the principle of the 
act." 

The winter of 1769 was one of public discontent. 
British troops had been arriving for some time, and nowhere 
were they given a welcome. Massachusetts and the Caro- 
linas would make no provision for them. An encounter of 
some kind was likely to break out at any moment. The 
troops in Boston were encamped on the Common, but senti- 
nels were posted here and there to guard public property. 
On the night of March 5, 1770, an alarm of fire filled the 
streets with people. A restless crowd of men and boys, 
finding the alarm false, turned upon a sentinel and began 
tormenting him. He gave the word, and six men and a 
corporal came to his assistance. This incensed the crowd, 
who began throwing snowballs and stones, and shouting, 
"Rascals, lobsters, bloody-backs!" The confusion in- 
creased; a soldier fired, and his companions followed with 
a volley. Six of the crowd lay wounded and five were 
dying, or dead. 

The city was instantly aroused to great excitement ; and 
the news, gathering strength, was carried from town to 
town: "The redcoats have massacred citizens of Boston 
in the street." The troops were soon removed down the 
bay; but hostility to the cause they represented could not 
be quieted. A tragical scene had been acted before the 
eyes of all America. A revolution was under way. 

In spite of Franklin's warning. Parliament, in repealing 
the American duties, insisted on a tax of threepence a 
pound on tea. The Americans had long been great tea- 
drinkers, but suddenly they gave up the luxury. There 
was an export duty of a shilling a pound in England. This 
was removed, so that after paying the tax the Americans 
would get their tea at least nine pence cheaper than the 



136 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1774 

English. But the Americans were firm. Not an ounce of 
tea would they buy. Tea commissioners were appointed 
to receive the cargoes sent over, but public sentiment com- 
pelled the commissioners to resign, or to return the tea to 
England. 

In Charleston, South Carolina, the tea was ruined by 
being stored in damp cellars. In Philadelphia, it could not 
be landed because of the people, and the ship that brought 
it turned back to London. In Boston, the tea-ship was 
ordered to return to England, but could get no clearance 
papers. A company of men, somewhat imperfectly dis- 
guised as Mohawks, left a public meeting, boarded the ship, 
burst open the chests, and threw the tea into the sea. A 
similar tea-party met near Gloucester, in New Jersey. A few 
leaves of tea fell into the shoes of one of the Boston 
"Mohawks," and is still displayed at the old State House 
as a very rare and superior "drawing" of old Bohea. 

News of the "tea-parties" exasperated Parliament. A 
crisis was at hand; the colonies were in rebellion, and they 
should be brought to their senses. The ministry had the 
majority of the people of England behind them. "The 
leading question," said Wedderburn, one of the leaders in 
the House of Commons "is the dependence or indepen- 
dence of America" ; and he was no friend to the colonies. 
The turbulence of the Americans was greatly exaggerated 
in the English reports. Lord North was at the head of the 
ministry. He brought forward and passed five measures 
in March, 1774. These were: 

The Boston Port Bill, which passed both Commons and 
the Lords unanimously, closed the port of Boston to trade 
of any kind, and removed the custom-house to Marblehead. 
This was a blow at the industrial rights of the people of 
Boston, and indirectly to the people of other colonies also. 

The bill for the government of Massachusetts, which 
passed by a vote of more than three to one, abrogated the 
charter of 1692, by abolishing town-meetings except for 
the election of town officers, or by special permission of the 
governor. This was a blow at the assembly, because repre- 
sentatives were elected in the town-meetings. Sheriffs 
were to be appointed and removed by the governor at 



1774] THE FIVE ACTS 137 

pleasure, and the sheriffs were to choose all jurymen. This 
was a blow at the right of jury trial. 

By a vote of more than four to one, a bill was passed 
transferring to Great Britain for trial any person indicted 
for murder or other crime. This was a blow at the ancient 
right of an accused person to be tried in the place where 
the act was committed. 

The quartering of troops on the people was declared 
legal. This violated an ancient right. This was the fourth 
act. 

With unanimity, a fifth act, called the Quebec Act, 
authorized on the St. Lawrence "the free exercise of the 
religion of the Church of Rome and confirmed to the clergy 
of that church their accustomed dues and rights." This 
provision strengthened British interests in Canada, and 
extended the Province of Quebec southward to the Ohio 
River, thus ignoring the rights of Virginia, Connecticut, 
and Massachusetts, whose territory, by their charters, 
extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In reorgan- 
izing Quebec, no provision whatever was made for an 
assembly. 

Each of these stringent measures violated what the 
assemblies had already declared to be "the ancient un- 
doubted rights of the people." It is not strange that the 
Americans called them "the five intolerable acts." 

The five acts were chiefly intended for Massachusetts; 
but in attacking one colony, Parliament virtually attacked 
all. If these acts were the beginning, what would be the 
end? Sympathy with Massachusetts and the sense of self- 
protection were alike stirred. Virginia again took the lead. 
The assembly declared the day when the Boston Port Bill 
should take effect a day of "fasting, humiliation, and 
prayer." This was a remarkable thing, because the Virgin- 
ians differed in many ways from the people of Massachusetts 
in their social life, in their industries, in their church affili- 
ations, in their traditions, and even in their laws. But a 
stroke of Parliament was making all Am.ericans kin. The 
royal governor straightway dissolved the house, but the 
burgesses met in a tavern, organized as a political body, 
and directed the committee of correspondence to propose 



138 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1774 

to other assemblies that a general congress meet at once. 
The Massachusetts Assembly, at the request of New York, 
named the ist of September as the time and Philadelphia 
as the place of meeting of a continental congress. 

The term "continental" was here used in a new and sig- 
nificant sense. At first, a congress was a meeting of dele- 
gates in a single colony. A congress of this kind was, in 
fact, an extraordinary political gathering, wholly distinct 
from the legislatures. During the French wars, delegates 
from several colonies met to consult common interests. 
These congresses usually represented the northern colonies, 
as the New York and Albany congresses. The Stamp Act 
led to another congress, but with a wider range of delegates, 
as some of the southern colonies were represented. Vir- 
ginia and Massachusetts now had proposed a "continental," 
that is as we would say a national, congress, in which every 
colony would be represented. 

The word "colonial" was passing out, "continental" 
was coming in; but "national" was not yet thought of. 
The first Continental Congress met in Carpenters' Hall, 
Philadelphia, and was in session seven weeks (September 
5-October 26). From twelve colonies came fifty-five men, 
the chosen leaders of the people. Georgia failed to come, 
though not because of lack of sympathy or patriotism. 
For the first time the people of the "continent," the 
incipient nation, had met in council. Looking back over 
the years, we see plainly that this Congress was no accident. 
Events had long been leading to it. 

It was no mere revolutionary body. Its work was 
deliberate, loyal, and permanent. Its main purpose was 
to set forth all the facts. Following colonial custom, it 
issued "addresses" to the parties interested. The Address 
to the People of the Colonies reviewed recent events, and 
urged union, co-operation, and moderation, but advised a 
continuance in their present attitude of non-importation till 
their rights were recognized. The Address to the People 
of Canada, written in French, and probably by John Dick- 
inson, was mainly a discussion of the evils of the Quebec 
Act, of the denial of an assembly to the Canadians, and of 
the attempt of England to establish a military instead of 



1774] THE CONGRESS 139 

a civil government in the province. The Address to the 
People of England, largely composed by John Jay, was an 
appeal to kindred over the sea for justice. If the rights 
of Englishmen in America were violated, what could Eng- 
lishmen in England expect. 

The Address to the King was a humble but profuse 
statement of loyalty, appealing to George III. not to listen 
to his evil counselors, but to hear the Americans in their 
own cause. All these addresses were written in a dignified 
style and in fitting language, and they remain among the 
most finished of American state papers. They have been 
the models of innumerable addresses in later times. 

Like the Stamp Act Congress, the Continental Congress 
issued a declaration of rights; that is, a political platform. 
Its propositions seem trite to us now, but they were living 
issues in the eighteenth century. The Americans were 
entitled to life, liberty, and property. This idea is at the 
foundation of our institutions. The exclusive right of tax- 
ation was in the assemblies. This made the assemblies the 
nucleus of American government, and went to the heart of 
the pending controversy. The Congress, speaking for the 
continent, supported the claims already made by Virginia 
and Massachusetts that the Americans had the right to 
assemble and petition for the redress of grievances. This 
recognized the existence of a new power in the country, the 
political meeting, or convention, which was becoming com- 
mon. Royal governors, acting for the king, had done all 
they could to prevent and disperse such meetings. The 
right to assemble and petition is so fundamental with us 
that it is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United 
States, and by every state constitution. 

The Americans claimed only the rights of Englishmen 
as granted by the old charters. Now, in truth, the Ameri- 
cans had more rights than most Englishmen, because the 
charters empowered them to make their own laws and to 
lay their own taxes through their own assemblies. Eng- 
lish kings gave the charters, and these were compacts or 
agreements of great solemnity which could not be broken 
or violated without changing the relation of the colonies to 
the crovyn. In conclusion, the Congress unanimously 



I40 WHO SHALL TAX AMERICA? [1774 

resolved that king or Parliament had no right to tax the 
Americans; or, to dissolve their assemblies; or, to quarter 
troops upon them in times of peace without their consent; 
or, to try them without a jury; or, to transport them to 
England for trial; or, to close their ports; or, to do any 
of the late acts, considered so grievous by the colonies. 

Yet this Congress did not hint at independence. It 
believed that all causes of dispute could be removed, and 
had great faith in its four addresses, and particularly in the 
petition to the king. The principal men of the country 
belonged to this Congress. They were now well acquainted 
with one another, and could henceforth act together in con- 
fidence. From one another they learned the resources of 
the country and the tone of public opinion. They were 
confident that the king would listen to reason, and that 
he would influence Parliament to respect colonial rights. 
Hopeful that all controversy would soon cease, and that 
before spring king and Parliament would act upon their 
petition and addresses, they adjourned, with a recommen- 
dation to the colonies to convene again in congress at Phil- 
adelphia on the loth of May, 1775. 

Before tracing the course of events which now quickly 
changed the history of America, let us take a glance at the 
people whose representatives had met in congress. 



CHAPTER XII 

COLONIAL DAYS 

1763-1776 

Down to the close of the French wars, in 1763, no name 
for the people of all colonies was in common use among 
them. The assemblies had sent troops and voted appro- 
priations for the king's service in the wars, but each colony 
was independent of the others, and there was no union 
of resources, except as some British commander-in-chief 
brought together the military supplies from New England, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. In the debates in 
Parliament the colonies came to be spoken of together as 
America, and their inhabitants as Americans. To the 
ministry the Americans were English people across the sea; 
but the ministry did not use the term American as the 
synonym of a united people. It was only a convenient 
political term, which recognized no peculiar rights. The 
people of the colonies at the time of the Stamp Act (1765) 
were mostly strangers to one another. The soldiers sent 
to the French wars were about the only travelers, and they 
knew more about the frontier than about any part of the 
country save their own community. 

The pride with which an American now speaks of his 
own state is far less than that with which an American 
in 1765 spoke of his own colony. Patrick Henry was 
expressing quite a new idea when, during the discussion 
growing out of the Stamp Act, he declared that he was 
an American first and then a Virginian. Many years of 
industrial and political association were needed to develop 
the spirit of union and nationality implied in Henry's 
patriotic words. He had uttered a sentiment that was 
slowly working its way over the country. After the 
Stamp Act, the Americans first, and very slowly, began to 
realize that they were "a. new nation, conceived in liberty 

141 



i\2 COLONIAL DAYS I » 765-1776 

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal." 

Few events stand forth from the gloom of these earlv 
days in imj^rishable brightness. Each colony was a small 
and pale retleciion of England, in speech, thought, and 
ideas. Prefeniient in politics w;is quite impossible, for the 
crown officers were few in number, and the highest in the 
colony, the governor, was sent from over the sea. The 
names rescued from oblivion, because they stand for colo- 
nies founded, as Pennsylvania, or cities, like New York. 
Trenton, Ixiltimore, Williamsburg, or Charleston, were 
scarcely more than names when first thus associated. The 
great personages were Englishmen, like Lord Chath.am. 
better known in America as William Pitt. Even Fr.mklin, 
whose portentous figure rises above th.it of any of his coun- 
lr)-men during the hist luUf- century- of the colonial era. did 
not emerge from the shadows of provincialism, and embody 
any such genenil interest among the colonists vas many of 
them bestowed upon some contemporani- fifth-rate English- 
man who happened to be secretary- of colonial atT^iirs. 

Men who live in a revolutionar)* time vve usually blind 
to its real heroes, especially if they touch elbows with them 
in a common struggle. The mysterj- of office .and power 
did not .itTect Franklin .is it did the head of the British 
ministry-; Franklin's American contemporaries were too 
ne;ir him to see him in his large proportions. 

Of the explorers, the discoverers, the men of Sp;iin and 
Fnince who l.iid open the wilderness .ind be.it down a jvith- 
w.iy for after ages, the people of coloni.il America took no 
hecvl. They neither praised them in books nor honored 
them in brass or marble. The pioneer receives his fir^t 
eulog\\ not in the log house but in the s.ilon. Parkm.in 
h.is restored Xew France and paintevl its heroes to the life; 
but such work as his can be done only a centurj* or more 
after the heroic age h.is closed. The sax-ages were too near 
our .ancestors to figure ,\s persons in a drama. Mephis- 
topheles w.is known to the Puritans by a plainer n.ime : the 
Hurons .md the French were incarnations of the evil one 
to the anxious settlers along the English frontier. 

But in everj- village there w.is a personage: in the Now 



175-1 FRANKLIN'S KITE 143 

Eni^Uind and the middle colonies, the minister or the justice 
of the peace, or the rich farmer or shipper; in the South, 
sometimes the rector of the parish, but commonly the i^reat 
planter, called also the "squire. These locally great people 
tilled the eye of the masses and quite shut out the few whom 
we would now name as the truly great men of the times: 
Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards, the one famed 
in science, politics, and in business, the other in theology. 

Scarcely a trace of the America of those years now 
remains; speech, dress, occupations, even the opportunities 
and ideas of life, have changed. IMore than this, the prin- 
ciples of government are now applied in a different manner. 
If one will make a list of the professions, the trades, the 
occupations, the industrial interests, that exist about him, 
it is quite safe to s;\y that few of them had existence then; 
or if any of them existed, they were wholly unlike their 
counterparts to-day. Vet the Americans of the eighteenth 
century- won their liberties, and ours, and laid the founda- 
tions of this great country- with the meager resources and 
the imperfect instruments then at hand. Therefore, were 
we to enumerate all our resources, our inventions, our con- 
veniences, we should have to conclude that our ancestors 
did very great things — indeed the greatest thing for us — 
\Wthout the steam-engine, the telegraph, the railroad, the 
steamboat, the repeating-rifle, the mower and reaper, the 
sewing-machine, and a thousand other devices which we 
think quite essential to life. 

It is well known that in 175 J Benjamin Franklin tlew 
a kite during a thunder-stonii ; that he tied a door-key to 
the string and let an end of the string into a common glass 
bottle. He thus made an electric batter\-. This simple 
though dangerous experiment. **that drew the lightning 
from the clouds." was the source of all the electrical appli- 
ances now in use. In a kite, a silken cord, a door-key, a 
glass bottle, and Dr. Franklin, we find the beginning of the 
electrical interests of to-dv\y. In the fanns. plantations, 
shops, meeting-houses and schools; in the flail, the wooden 
hoe, and the plow; in the leather and homespun clothes; 
in the plain food: in the flint-lock muskets, the rude 
wagons, ,ind the ox-teams of 1776. and in the Americans, 



144 COLONIAL DAYS [i 763-1 776 

we find the beginning of all our rights and privileges as a 
free people. Evidently we owe more to Dr. Franklin than 
to the kite: and more to our ancestors than to their flails 
and flint-locks. 

After all. it was the people and their ideas in 1776 which 
laid the foundations of a great nation, whose government 
is "'of the people, by the people, and for the people." 

Climate, soil, and natural advantages, together with 
laws, customs, and occupations, divided the colonies into 
three groups: the southern, Georgia, the Carolinas. Vir- 
ginia, and Maryland; the middle, Delaware. Pennsylvania. 
New Jersey, and New York: the northern, New England. 
Connecticut. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New- 
Hampshire. A glance at a map will show that each region 
has well-defined natural boundaries. New England has a 
distinct system of rivers, and highlands shut it off from the 
middle colonies. These, in the eighteenth century-, were 
settled chiefly along their great rivers, the Hudson, the 
Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The trade of the colo- 
nies was by water. That of New York, New Jersey, and 
Delaware centered at New York City and Philadelphia. A 
portion of the inland trade of Pennsylvania went to Balti- 
more. With the exception of this trade, all the commerce 
of the southern colonies was carried over southern rivers. 
Thus each group of colonies had its own highways. 

The colonies in closest relation were those that used a 
river in common. The Savannah, the Potomac, the Sus- 
quehanna, the Delaware, and the Connecticut were natural 
bonds of union between the colonies along their banks. 
But the country- was so vast, and the people so few. they 
seem like an infant nation lost in the wilderness. 

From Georgia to New Hampshire the people were 
divided into various classes, which custom and law made 
almost unchangeable. The only division common to all 
the colonies was that of bond and free. Slavery- existed 
in all. There were only seven hundred slaves in New 
Hampshire, but in Virginia there were two hundred and 
fifty thous^md. In the Carolinas and Georgia, slaves com- 
prised more than half the population. The whites were 
chiefly of English stock. There were Gennans in Georgia 



I7(\?-I7761 r(.>riM,AriON 145 

and rcm\s\lvani.i : iMonch 1 hig'uenots in Maal.uul .uul 
New York; Scotch and Irish in Nortli Carolina. roiins\l- 
vania. and Now llan\pshiro; Dutch in Now York and Tonn- 
svlv.mia. and a tow Italians and rortui;vioso in Baltiniorc, 
rhiladclphia. and Now York City. Indians woro a com- 
mon sight in all tho western sett lenient s. 

The exact number of the pooj^le is unknown. In \^~o 
it was about two million four hundred and thiity thous>ind. 
of whom more than eii;"ht hundred and thirty thousand were 
slaves. AmouL^ the whites were those "bound to service 
for a term ot \ears," who were not .ipprentices learning;" a 
trade, nor L;irls "bound out"' to domestic service, but per- 
sons who had been convictotl of some crime in haiL^land and 
transported to America. aU'.] their labor sold there tor a 
term of vears. Such conxicis weie tound in all the colo- 
nies, but the\- were more numeious in the middle and 
southern. In Mar\land they were sometii\ies chained and 
set to work on the highways. Sometimes the planters 
emploj'od them to build houses. After serving their term. 
they usualK' continued to li\e in the colony, but it took a 
long time for them auil their descendants to outli\e the 
memory of their misfortunes. 

Another class was the rodemptioners — persons too poor 
to pay their passage-money to America, w lu^ signed a con- 
tract with a shipping master to p.u- it on .irriwU. This 
meant that they empowered him to get his pay by selling 
their labor for a term of years. .\ common notice in the 
newspaper was the announcement of the arrival of a packet 
and tho public or private sale of a "serving-man" or "serv- 
ing-woman." In Phil.idolphia auel Baltimore a lively busi- 
ness went on in this purchase and sale of rodemptioners. 
Not infrequent K' these were better otlucatod than those who 
bought them, and they wore employed to teach school or 
to keep books. l"\->r a time most o\ the schools in Mary- 
land were conducted by convicts or rodemptioners. The 
changes wrought by the Revolution put an end to the trans- 
portation of convicts and the tratlic in "roilemptionors" 
and "indentured servants." 

Nearly all the work in the South was done b\' slaves. 
The great planters composed the ruling class. The)- held 



146 COLONIAL DAYS [i 763-1 776 

or controlled all the offices, except that of governor. He 
was sent out from England. They were the aristocracy 
of the colony, and except in South Carolina, usually lived 
on their plantations the year round. These commonly had 
a river-front where rice, tobacco, bacon, wheat, and other 
produce was shipped — usually in New England boats — 
directly to the planter's agent in London. He in return sent 
back Crocker}', cloth, nails, tools, medicines, furniture, silks, 
saddles, books, and a long list of other articles. Tools and 
implements were repaired, but seldom made, on the plan- 
tation. 

There were few industries of importance other than 
agricultural in the South, and for this the trade laws were 
largely at fault. Twenty-five thousand tons of pig iron and 
five hundred of wrought iron were produced in Marj'land 
in 1774, but not a nail or a knife-blade or a shovel could 
be made there. The iron must be sent to England to be 
manufactured. Charleston was the chief southern city, and 
had about fifteen thousand people in 1775. Its beautiful 
harbor was crowded with ships, some of which were built 
there. It was the home of the great planters, and its soci- 
ety was refined and exclusive. Next to the planters ranked 
the merchants and lawyers. As the land usually descended 
to the eldest son. the younger sons became lawyers, cler- 
g\'men, and colonial officials, rarely merchants, and never 
mechanics or small traders. 

Most of the people in the middle colonies were farmers, 
nearly all of whom lived and worked on their farms. Labor 
was diversified. Philadelphia was the center of trade, poli- 
tics, and social life. In the Schuylkill Valley were many 
small foundries, colloquially called forges, where pig iron 
was made. One of these. Valley Forge, was destined to 
be the scene of much suffering during the Revolutionary' 
War. Paper was made in a few places, as at Germantown, 
but the English government did its best to prevent me- 
chanical industries. Flour was an important export from 
Pennsylvania, and found a market in ever\' southern colony. 
New York City had already become a great trade center. 
New Jersey divided its trade between New York and Phila- 
delphia. The Pennsylvania farmers were chiefly of two 



1763-1776] OCCUPATIONS 147 

nationalities, German and English, who had little in com- 
mon. The Germans clung to their own language, customs, 
and ways, and the two communities widely differed in their 
views of public affairs. The laws were printed in German 
and English ; Germantown was a center of learning. 
Books, pamphlets, and newspapers issued from the German 
press. Undoubtedly the Pennsylvania Germans and the 
Friends, who composed a large part of the English popu- 
lation, were the best farmers in America, 

The people of New England were also chiefly engaged 
in farming. The soil is naturally less fertile than that 
farther south, and for this reason the New England farmer 
supplemented his farming with various other occupations. 
He became a ship-carpenter and found employment in the 
shipyards. He became a sailor, or the owner of a schooner, 
a style of boat that originated in New England. He caught 
fish in great quantities off the Grand Banks; he went whal- 
ing in distant seas. His boat became a common carrier for 
the tobacco and rice planters of the South, the sugar planters 
of the West Indies, the merchants of London. He did 
not hesitate to go- the world over for a cargo. Nearly all 
the carrying trade of the colonies was in New England 
bottoms. New England abounded in mechanics of every 
trade. As in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland, so 
in New England, the wealthiest men were merchants. 
Newburyport, Salem, Marblehead, Boston, New Bedford, 
New Haven, New London, were flourishing merchant 
towns; and had it not been for the trade laws, manufactures 
would have flourished all over New England. 

In New England the mass of people lived very plainly. 
Tea and sugar were luxuries. As one went southward, the 
table increased in importance, in the variety of its food, in the 
quality of the dishes, and in the style of domestic service. 
The great merchants, the ship owners, in New England and 
the middle colonies usually lived in handsome style. Their 
houses were fine mansions, well furnished with the conven- 
iences and with many of the luxuries of European life. 
They had many domestics, and were the leaders in the social 
world. In the South, even greater luxury was seen in tlie 
homes of the great planters. Their family plate, their cut 



148 CX)LONIAL DAYS [1763-1776 

glasis. their naperA'. their wines, were not excelled else- 
where in the country-. 

The small planters lived in a plainer way. Unlike the 
houses of their wealthier neighbors, theirs were not fur- 
nished in mahoi^any, the walls were not covereil with 
embossed leather specially imported: and their furniture 
was less cunningly car\-ed. But the rich merchants and 
farmers of the North and the pLmters of the South formed 
only a small part of the American people. Charles Carroll, 
of Carrollton. Mar>-land: George Washington, of \*irginia, 
and John Hancock, of Mass^ichusetts. were the wealthiest 
men in America. Carroll and Washington were rich in 
land: Hancock, in shipping. Neither of these was worth 
much above h;\lf a million dollars. Most of the free popu- 
lation of the countrA' were in comfortable circumstiinces. 
As a people, the Americans were used to better and more 
abundant food, were better housed and more comfortably 
clothed, than the pev>ple of any other country- at that time. 

About seventy miles from the sea westward lay the 
frontier. Here were the "back districts." where rents and 
tiixes could not be collected: a lawless region, quite beyond 
the control of the colonial governments. The frontier was 
not friendly to the older settlements. This was specially 
true in Georgia. North Carc»lina. and Pennsylvania. Hunt- 
ers, fur-traders, fugitives from justice. Indians, and a body 
of hardy pioneers made life along the fa">ntier a curious 
mixture of civilization and s»\vager\-. But the frontier was 
quick to respond to the sentiment of resistance to t.ixation 
by Parliament. Life on the eilge of the settlements was 
too free to tolerate even slight limitations. Nowhere in 
America were "the rights of the colonies" more eagerly 
asserted and upheld than by the restless population on the 
border. 

for more than a hundred years. New England had sup- 
ix)rted and prc»fited by the free public schools. No nati\-e 
New Englander was illiterate, except the solitarv- hunter 
whose life had been spent in the woods of Mviine or Canada. 
Ever\- town had a grammar school, and Har\%\rd. Yale, and 
Brown made it unnecessarj- for New England parents to 
educate their sons abaxid. The intelligence of the New 



I7t\>-'7:<'1 COl.l.Kr.KS X.]q 

Eni^land people as a class was superior to that of the people 
of England. France, or German)-. "Wisdom is the prin- 
cipal thin^;-." "«.iet understanding;." weie Now l".n;;l.uul 
ideals. The assemblies freel\' voted appropriations tor the 
schools, and public and private i^enerosity remembered the 
collci^es. rhe etTects were evident throui^hout New I'.Ui;- 
land life. Ihe people were fond of ari;iu\KMU and anal\-sis. 
They discussed the most ditVicult questions in politics and 
relii^ion without hesitation. K\ery home was a little parlia- 
ment. The Stamp Act and all the "' intolerable acts" of 
Tarliament were sure to meet as exhaustive a discussion in 
every New F,ni;land town as in Parliament itself. 

In the i\uddle and southern colonies there weie no free 
public schools, and private schools i^ratlually diminished in 
number as one went southward from New York City. The 
wealthy patronized them, and also employed tutors for their 
sons. Kiuii's Collci^e (^now Columbia University"). Princeton, 
and the University of Pennsylvania were liberally patronized, 
but onl\- by the wealthy. To-day, when schools abound, 
it is ditVicult to believe the extent of illiteracy in America 
at the close of the coloni.il era. The illiterate area closely 
coincided with the slave area. Where sla\es were most 
numerous. illiterac\- most abounded. This was not due 
wholly to the entire exclusion of the slaves front the means 
of learniui;' to read and write, but in the middle, and par- 
ticularly in the southern, colonies, to the absence of school 
privilci^es for the poorer whites. 

\\"hile all over the country the poor had the i^ospel 
preached to them, they had no free school privilcL^es out- 
side of New England. New York, and some parts of Penn- 
sylvania. Among the wealthy families of the South were 
graduates of William and Mary, of Princeton. Pennsylvania. 
Oxford, and Cambridge, and many more who had acquired 
a liberal education in lawyers' offices. These fa\ored men 
became the leaders when the great struggle came. 

\'irginia at this time contained an extraordinary' group 
of men. whose public services rank them with the great of 
an)- age or country. George Washington. Thomas Jeffer- 
son. John Marshall. Patrick Henry. George Mason. James 
iNIadison. George Wythe. Richard Henry Lee. were of the 



150 COLONIAL DAYS [1763-17 76 

same generation ; devoted themselves to one great cause, and 
to the end of their Hves retained the confidence of the people. 

The assemblies represented the people, but who were 
the voters? To-day we have manhood sufTrage; in 1765 it 
was unknown. To-day. one person in five is a voter; then it 
was one in thirty. The members of assembly were chosen 
by white men, twenty-one years of age or more, who owned 
land, and at the same time professed their belief in a reli- 
gious creed. The amount of land required varied in the 
different colonies, but was not less than fifty acres in any. 
The religious qualifications also varied, but were alike in 
permitting only Protestants to vote. Out of a total popu- 
lation of a little more than two and a half millions, only 
about eighty thousand were qualified to vote, or about one 
thirtieth of all the people in the country. This does not 
seem to us much of a "popular government." So great 
have been the changes since 1776, an equal population 
to-day would have nearly half a million voters. In New 
England and the middle colonies the vote was by ballot; in 
the southern colonies, viva voce. 

Colonial taxation by Parliament was not opposed by all 
Americans. Many approved of the five "intolerable acts," 
and thought that the Stamp Act Congress and the Conti- 
nental Congress were meetings of rebels. Among those 
who thought so were many people of wealth, who believed 
that in case of trouble with England the colonies were 
bound to be losers. Therefore they shouted for king and 
Parliament, and voted against men who. if elected to the 
assembly, were likely to oppose the ministry. Thus the 
eighty thousand voters were not all on the side of the as- 
semblies. The number of voters who were loyalists, as the 
king's friends called themselves, is unknown. But this 
number, together with the number of qualified voters who 
on account of age, sickness, or indifference did not vote, 
cuts down to a small figure the number of voters that sup- 
ported the patriot cause. 

There is reason to believe that less than fifty thousand 
votes were cast in the aggregate at any time, from 1765 to 
1775, for assembly cielegates who would support a policy 
of opposition to king and Parliament. It must be remem- 



1 763-1 776] POLITICS AND POLITICIANS 151 

bered, too, that the first Continental Congress did not hint 
at separation from Great Britain. The delegates chosen to 
the assemblies all over the country, from 1765 to 1775, were 
expected to do no more than defend "the ancient and 
undoubted rights" of the people of the colonies. 

The voters were a few thousand ; the leaders a few score. 
In New England were James Otis, Samuel and John Adams, 
Joseph Warren, and John Hancock, all of Massachusetts; 
Stephen Hopkins and Roger Sherman, of Connecticut; 
John Langdon, of New Hampshire. In the middle colo- 
nies, they were Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, Thomas 
Mifflin, John Dickinson, all of Pennsylvania; John Wither- 
spoon, William Paterson, of New Jersey, and George 
Reed, of Delaware. In the southern colonies, they were 
Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, and William Paca, of Mary- 
land ; the eminent men already named in Virginia; John 
Rutledge, of North Carolina, and Charles Pinckney, Charles 
C. Pinckney, and Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina. 
There were others who later became leaders, but these were 
the chiefs of the opposition when the Stamp Act passed. 

As the struggle went on, the leaders worked out a politi- 
cal organization which rapidly unified public sentiment. 
The devices selected were: 

Committees of correspondence in every colony, to keep 
all the assemblies thoroughly informed. The leaders usu- 
ally belonged to these committees. They drew most of 
the declarations, resolutions, and addresses passed by the 
assemblies. 

Committees of public safety, to see that the acts of 
Congress were carried out. Their authority rested on the 
voluntary support of the public. 

The Sons of Liberty, or political clubs, to agitate the 
questions of the day, to hold public meetings, and to enlist 
the support of the young men of the country. 

The convention, which, in colonies whose assemblies 
were loyal, should take their place by popular election and 
conduct the government. 

The Congress, the culmination of all the former devices, 
because it was the result of them all, to act as the grand 
committee of the whole country. 



152 COLONIAL DAYS [1640-1776 

Pamphleteers and political writers were selected with 
great skill, to present the American cause in a popular way. 
The most celebrated of this class was Thomas Paine, whose 
"Common Sense," in 1776, was widely read, and exercised 
an uprecedented influence. It was a powerful appeal for 
political and industrial independence. 

Until 1640 no book in English was printed in America. 
John Smith's "True Relation of such Occurrences and Acci- 
dents of Note as hath Happened in Virginia" was pub- 
lished in London, in 1608, the first book about America 
written by an EngUshman, and a classic in its way. Two 
years later, William Strachey published "A True Repertory 
of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, 
Knight, upon and from the Islands of the Bermudas, his 
coming to Virginia and the Estate of that Colony then and 
after under the Government of the Lord De La Ware," a 
story of strange adventures which probably suggested to 
Shakespeare "The Tempest," the last play he wrote. 
Other books about America appeared in London from this 
time on. 

In 1649, Thomas Welde of Roxbury, Richard Mather 
of Dorchester, and John Eliot, the "Apostle to the In- 
dians" and the translator of the Bible into the Algonquin 
tongue (1663), printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 
"Bay Psalm Book," which bore the title, "The Psalms in 
Meter, Faithfully Translated, for the Use, Edification, and 
Comfort of the Saints, in Public and Private, especially in 
New England." It was revised by President Dunster, 
of Harvard, passed through twenty-three American edi- 
tions, and was long used among the dissenting churches 
in England and Scotland. 

During the seventeenth century, and after 1640, at least 
two hundred books were printed in America, mostly in 
English, though a few in Latin, and the greater number 
were of a religious character, and were printed in New 
England. 

Daniel Denton's "Brief Description of New York," 
1670, was the first printed English book giving an account 
of New York City; Mrs. Anne Bradstreet published a com- 
pilation of poems in 1678, the first book of its kind from 



1690-1776] NEWSPAPERS 153 

an American press; the Laws of Virginia, 168 1, was the 
first book printed in that colony, and Samuel Atkins, in 
1785, issued from the press of William Bradford, in Phila- 
delphia, the Pennsylvania Calendar, or, "American's Mes- 
senger," probably the first book that came from that 
celebrated printer. 

In 1690, on the 25th of September, Samuel Sewall, of 
Boston, published "Public Occurrences," which has been 
called the first American newspaper. In 1696, Increase 
Mather, of Boston, published "A Discourse Concerning the 
Holy Angels," which contained a portrait, said to be the 
first engraved in our country. In 1700 appeared the first 
American pamphlet against African slavery, written by 
Samuel Sewall, and entitled "The Selling of Joseph." It 
consists of only three pages. "Public Occurrences" was not 
successful as a newspaper. It was not until April 24, 1704, 
that the first paper was issued, entitled "The Boston News 
Letter," and it continued to appear till 1776. 

"Mother Goose," a book which has passed into so many 
editions that the number is unknown, appeared in Boston 
in 1719, and is said to have been written by Elizabeth Ver- 
goose. Many German books of great artistic beauty as 
examples of the printer's art were issued from the press at 
Germantown, near Philadelphia. In 1758, Thomas God- 
frey wrote "The Prince of Parthia, " said to be the first 
play by an American author that was put on the stage. 

The period from the close of the French wars to the 
outburst of the Revolution marks the beginning of Ameri- 
can political literature. Never were a brief dozen years 
more surcharged with unrest, bold thinking, and aspiration. 
From the disturbed mind of that time there poured forth in- 
numerable pieces of writing which in the aggregate consti- 
tute a literary unit, but severally they seem no more than dull 
or racy political pamphlets, pasquinades, and doggerel verse. 

The new drift in political thought directed the spirit of 
these pieces. James Otis and John Adams, as early as 
1764, were dipping their pens in republican ink and essay- 
ing to describe sound constitutional grounds for American 
ideas. Oxenbridge Thacher, in a more conciliatory spirit, 
labored to prove that all Americans were Englishmen, but 



154 COLONIAL DAYS [1640-1776 

not until the day of the Stamp Act did the American mind 
begin to glow in opposition to the policy of the home gov- 
ernment and to deliver itself in threatening speech. Stephen 
Hopkins boldly stated the rights of the colonies, and Otis 
nibbed his pen and re-entered the field with vindications of 
the colonies and replies and rejoinders to their criticisers. 
The Stamp Act may be said to have gone to the head of 
the American pamphleteers, of whom the foremost was 
John Adams. Daniel Dulany. a Man,-land lawyer, wrote 
earnestly for peace, urging a policy that would make parlia- 
mentan,- taxation unprofitable; but he lost the confidence 
of both patriots and tories. John Dickinson defended nul- 
lification, in masterful prose, in 1766. as the right of the 
Americans. The gifted Jonathan Maliew. a minister of 
Boston, cut off by death prematurely in 1766. had preached 
individualism and liberty not in vain, and left many political 
tracts to stir the patriotism of his countr\-men. 

The tea episode produced endless verses and political 
squibs in rhyme, of which the most humorous was an anony- 
mous chronicle, after the style of the Book of the Kings. 
Ever].' new grievance precipitated a new shower of political 
pamphlets, as the Boston Port Bill called forth Josiah 
Ouincy's "Observations'* and James Wilson's "Consider- 
ations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Author- 
ity of the British Parliament." Satire uttered her voice in 
public places, and inspired the pen of Francis Hopkinson. 
Philip Freneau, and Jonathan Trumbull. The satirical 
masterpiece of the times was Trumbull's "McFingal." 
which knows but one rival in later times — Lowells "Fable 
for Critics." 

Of prose and verse on other than political themes there 
was little, but this made a beginning. Trumbull's now for- 
gotten poems and essays comprise the principal evidence 
of this literar\- activity. The loyalists found able defenders 
among the pamphleteers; in Samuel Seabur\-'s " Massachu- 
scttensis," priiited in 1775, and in Joseph Callaway's "Can- 
did Examination" of English and American irlaims. of the 
same year. To Seabur\-. a vigorous and popular reply was 
made by an undergraduate at King's College. Alexander 
Hamilton, the beginning of his literarv services to the 



1 733-1 776] THE ALMANAC 155 

Republic, and Jolin Adams wrote his powerful essays, "No- 
vanglus," iu reply to Leonard. 

The unique pamphleteer and political writer of the times 
was an Englishman. Thomas Paine, who arrived in the 
country late in 1774. bearing a letter from Franklin. His 
coming equaled that of an army with banners. He arrived 
at a critical moment in our history, and quickly seizing the 
meaning of the crisis, unfolded it in an epoch-making pam- 
phlet, "Common Sense," which appeared in January, 
1776, and proved to be the herald of American indepen- 
dence. Edition followed edition throughout the English- 
speaking world. All other pamphleteers and political 
speakers had gained only a local hearing; Paine took the 
American people by storm. The enormous effect of his 
pamphlet was American independence. 

The next step, however fatal or auspicious, was easy — 
to formulate current and accepted ideas of independence. 
This Jefferson did in the immortal Declaration in June fol- 
lowing. This was our first and our best state paper, raising 
the standard of our political and ethical ideas, and indeed 
of those of the whole world. As a merely literary piece, it 
must be ranked high ; as a political manifesto, it is a master- 
piece. It was the culmination of the political writings of 
the time, and has been assigned by posterity to an eminence 
which no other state paper or political manifesto has reached. 
It may fittingly be accepted as the exposition of the spirit 
which pervaded the Revolution. 

Better known among the plain people than any writing 
on politics or theology produced during the eighteenth 
century was the almanac, that ephemeral record of the 
seasons. Most famed of almanacs was Franklin's, long 
familiar to the world as Poor Richard's, instituted in 1733, 
and published for twenty-five years. There were others, 
scarcely less popular — the New England, the Columbian, 
Saunders's, Father Abraham's, the Freeman's, and the 
Fanners' — all imitators of Poor Richard. The almanac 
was often converted into a family diary, as "An Astro- 
nomical Diary; or. An Almanack for the Year of our Lord 
Jesus Christ 1745, compiled by Nathanael Ames and printed 
in Boston," which belonged to one Hemenway, and which, 



156 COLONIAL DAYS [1763-1776 

interleaved, contains an ample account of the affairs of a pros- 
perous family, including the settlement of the father's estate. 

In poor Richard's Almanac for 1758, Franklin inserted 
what has become the best known piece of American litera- 
ture, "The Way to Wealth," known also as "La Science 
du Bon homme Richard," a skillful resume of all the wise 
things Poor Richard had been saying for a quarter of a 
century. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford tells us that "seventy 
editions of it have been printed in English, fifty-six in 
French, eleven in German, and nine in Italian. It has 
been translated into Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Welsh, 
Polish, Gaelic, Russian, Bohemian, Dutch, Catalan, Chi- 
nese, modern Greek, and phonetic writing. It has been 
printed at least four hundred times, and is to-day as popu- 
lar as ever." No man who would win wealth can afford to 
neglect the way Poor Richard points out. 

Trade, commerce, and much of the traveling of the 
time were by water. In the South, public conveyances were 
quite unknown. The roads were mere bridle-paths, except 
near the towns. Southern inns were infrequent and bad, 
and chiefly because there was little excuse for their exist- 
ence. The planters showered a generous hospitality on 
travelers. A stranger might have traveled through the 
South and been a welcome guest at any mansion. From 
Philadelphia it was possible to get a letter on to New York 
three times a week, and twice a week from New York to 
Boston. From Baltimore, the mail found its way once a 
month through Virginia and the Carolinas, and once a month 
the mail left New York for England, but it was often six 
weeks old before it reached its destination. 

The swiftest travel was on horseback, and thirty miles 
a day was considered fast time. Twelve miles a day in a 
coach was good time. However, there was little occasion 
for traveling. The trade laws forbade all commerce between 
colonies, therefore "business trips" from colony to colony 
were unknown. As no one migrated from his native place, 
visits from relatives were infrequent. No one dreamed of 
traveling for pleasure. The rich planters of South Carolina 
went to Charleston for the winter, the great land-owners of 
the Hudson Valley had their town houses in New York 



1765-1776] POPULAR UNREST 157 

City, a few wealthy Friends in riiiladelphia moved to their 
country houses, near by, in summer. But the mass of 
people stayed at home, seldom wrote or received letters, 
had no newspapers, had few books, and cared little for read- 
ing. It might seem that such a people would look with 
indifference upon parliamentary taxation. Why were they 
so easily roused? 

At the bottom of all political unrest from 1765 to 1776 
were the restrictions on labor, trade, and manufactures. 
For nearly a century the trade laws had been openly vio- 
lated ; but when a commission was prepared to go to Boston 
to enforce them, the days of unmolested smuggling were 
over. Some of the large fortunes in the country were the 
profits of smuggling. The Americans knew that they were 
prepared to manufacture many articles which they were 
compelled to purchase in England. With iron cropping out 
at their feet, they were forbidden to make even a horseshoe 
nail. No man could erect a woolen mill or a hat factory. 
He might make hats for his own use, but he must not com- 
pete with the English manufacturer or the English merchant. 

This restriction prevented any great diversity of labor. 
Life had few kinds of opportunities. A man might take up 
wild land, but what market was there for his produce? 
Trade restrictions also fixed class distinctions. A young 
man could not reasonably hope to better the condition to 
which he was born. A few did, but it was after 1776. To 
us colonial life may seem picturesque, but we would find it 
a kind of solitary confinement. Yet the people who found 
themselves tied thus hands and feet were politically more 
free than most of the people of England. 

So much has been said of "taxation without representa- 
tion," one is almost tempted to believe that if the Ameri- 
cans had been allowed to send a few members to Parliament, 
England might have escaped the loss of her colonies. With 
the two countries so far apart that they had only one mail 
a month, and return news in ten or twelve weeks, repre- 
sentation was practically impossible. Were it not for the 
rapid transit of passengers and freight, and the more rapid 
communication of ideas, our Union of to-day would be 
impossible. The assemblies then were the American repre- 



158 COLONIAL DAYS [1763-1776 

sentative bodies, because each consisted of delegates from 
a small community who were immediately acquainted with 
its wants. These could readily be made known. Yet 
satisfaction of many of these wants conflicted with English 
law, and especially the laws in restraint of trade. The 
political ideal of the Americans at this time was that of a 
colony whose laws should be made by an assembly chosen 
by the people. This seems simple until we come to ana- 
lyze it, and then it proves to mean industrial as well as 
political independence. In 1765 the Americans had more 
political than industrial rights and privileges. 

The Americans complained more of Parliament than of 
the royal governors or the proprietors. The civil organiza- 
tion was thoroughly established, life and property were 
safe, taxes were light. Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
which elected all their officials, were no more prosperous 
than Pennsylvania, which had a lord proprietor, or Vir- 
ginia, which had a royal governor. P>anklin went to the 
root of the matter when he told a member of the House of 
Commons that it was not the amount of the tax, but its 
principle, that the Americans considered. If there were no 
principle behind the expostulations and petitions of the 
assemblies, and the addresses and declarations of Congress, 
then the Americans were only law-breakers. The whole 
dispute turned on the interpretation of the principles of 
government. 

The material instruments, the resources which the 
Americans had to aid them in the interpretation, seem now 
as simple as Franklin's kite and string, key and bottle. The 
American civil experiment derives its value from the people 
who tried it. In spite of much illiteracy; in spite of slav- 
ery, bad roads, and infrequent mails; in spite of unskilled 
labor in the arts, of homespun clothes; in spite of few 
cities, of clumsy tools, a scarcity of books and newspapers; 
in spite of plain living, wretched inns, and awkward chaises, 
of ox-teams and smuggling; in spite of a limited suffrage 
and rough frontiersmen, our ancestors from 1765 to 1776 
managed to get to the bottom of the principles of repre- 
sentative government, and also to get fairly started in the 
way of applying them. 



CHAPTER XIII 

INDEPENDENCE DECLARED 

1774-1776 

The king, the Parliament, and the ministry were deter- 
mined to punish Massachusetts, and particularly the people 
of Boston, for their open defiance. The port of Boston 
should be closed; grass should grow in its streets; the city 
should be brought to its senses. As for the troublesome 
assembly, it should never again be suffered to foment rebel- 
lion in America. The government of Massachusetts had 
been of too popular a character. Henceforth, the governor 
should be a military man sent over by the king, and should 
have soldiers from the British army to support him. There 
should be no assembly unless he ordered one to be elected. 
The judges should be paid by the king, not by the assem- 
bly. In fine, Massachusetts should be governed by a British 
soldier. Representative government should be abolished, 
and a military system should take its place. The colony 
should be treated as a conquered province. These provis- 
ions were the substance of the Massachusetts Bill passed by 
Parliament in 1774, and its execution was at once attempted. 
Gen"eral Thomas Gage was appointed military governor of 
the colony, and accompanied by several regiments of sol- 
diers, he reached Boston in May, 1774. 

He was astonished to find the people in arms. Obeying 
his instructions, he ordered the assembly to meet at Salem 
in October, but as he became better acquainted with the 
state of public feeling, he decided that an assembly would 
only make matters worse, and countermanded the order. 
His ships could command Boston on three sides. The land 
approach, Boston Neck, he fortified. To the Americans 
this looked like war. The assembly denied his right to dis- 
solve it before it met, and under the lead of Samuel Adams, 
John Hancock, and other patriots, met at Salem, sent news 

159 



i6o INDEPENDENCE DECLARED [1775 

of the condition of affairs to the other colonies, and pre- 
pared to organize a government for the colony after the 
model of its charter of 1629. For nearly three years the 
government had been independent of the king. The assem- 
bly had organized committees, through whom the public 
business was conducted. The collectors paid the taxes to 
a treasurer named by the assembly, and Samuel Adams 
devised a "Committee of Correspondence" to keep other 
colonies informed. 

General Gage found himself merely at the head of a few 
British regiments in Boston, instead of being military gov- 
ernor of "the Province of Massachusetts Bay." Of course 
the assembly would refuse to obey his orders. It went 
further. Having adjourned to Cambridge, it voted to col- 
lect powder and guns and to put the colony in position to 
defend itself. In June it ordered twelve thousand men to 
be enrolled and be ready for service at any minute. New 
Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were asked to 
raise troops for the common cause. All this meant war. 
Gage saw that the people were determined to fight for their 
rights. 

The supplies were collected at several places, among 
them at Concord, a town about twenty miles from Boston. 
Secretly, Gage prepared an expedition that should go by 
way of Lexington, where John Hancock and Samuel Adams 
were reported to be staying with a friend, should arrest 
them, and push on to Concord and destroy the powder, 
guns, and provisions. Shortly before midnight of April 
18, 1775, the eight hundred regulars started. But Boston 
was full of patriots, and none of Gage's movements escaped 
them. Before the order to march was given, mounted 
messengers were stationed by the Americans at Charleston, 
waiting for the signal that the troops were in motion. Paul 
Revere caused lights to be hung from the Old North Church 
tower as a signal that the troops had started. 

At once the messengers flew along the roads, rousing 
the people. Adams and Hancock were warned. On the 
messengers galloped, giving warning to all. At sunrise, 
the troops reached the village green at Lexington. Instead 
of surprising the town, they found the minute-men in arms. 



1775] CONCORD i6i 

They refused to disperse; the English fired, and sixteen 
men lay dead or wounded. Scarcely delaying, the king's 
troops hurried on to Concord, where they destroyed what 
supplies the Americans had not been able to conceal in 
places of safety, burned the court-house, and began their 
march back to Boston. But since midnight the minute- 
men had been gathering from all the country round. Seiz- 
ing their flint-locks and powder-horns, they hurried on to 
find the "redcoats." 

In fine order these were marching back to their barracks; 
but now from Concord bridge, from behind stone fences 
and the tall elm-trees, from the hay-stacks and the bushes, 
there poured a deluge of farmers' fire such as no British 
army had ev^er felt before. Every farmer was a marksman, 
with no bullets to waste. The stately march of the red- 
coats became a retreat, and the retreat turned into a flight, 
like Braddock's twenty years before. Their numbers were 
vanishing under the deadly fire, and they ran all the way 
to Lexington. Here reinforcements met them. Three 
hundred dead or dying soldiers were left behind, and four- 
teen hundred strong, they reached Boston just as the sun 
was setting. Close on their heels were the minute-men ; 
and now it seemed as if the whole province was with them. 
Next morning, as the echoes of the British drum-beat rever- 
berated over the bay. General Gage found himself and his 
army shut up in Boston. At Chelsea, at Charleston, at 
Cambridge, at Roxbur}', and back at Lexington and Con- 
cord, the minute-men were gathering. 

Boston was besieged; the war for American indepen- 
dence had opened. A hundred years after the stand of the 
patriots at Concord bridge, their fidelity and courage were 
commemorated, and the "Concord Hymn." written by 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, was sung. One of its verses tells 
the whole storj^' : 

" By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled; 
Here the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

On the loth of May, as had been agreed, the second 
Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. Nearly all the 



i62 INDEPENDENCE DECLARED [1775 

members of the last Congress had been again chosen dele- 
gates, and all the colonies were represented. They thought, 
a year before, when they sent their humble petition to the 
king and their addresses to Parliament, to the English 
people, to Canada, and to the colonies, and a declaration 
of rights as a postscript, that they had satisfied every 
reasonable man that the English were wrong and the Ameri- 
cans right. But now winter and spring had passed, and the 
unexpected had happened: the king would not even receive 
their petition. Parliament would not retreat a single inch. 

The people of England and the Canadians paid no atten- 
tion to their address. Concord and Lexington had been 
fought. The British commander-in-chief and his troops 
were hardly safe in Boston. All New England was in arms. 
On the very day Congress met, the Green Mountain Boys, 
led by Ethan Allen, surprised and captured Fort Ticonde- 
roga with all its military stores, and next day captured 
Crown Point. Thus, instead of gracious words from George 
III. and the repeal of the intolerable acts, Congress, a good 
deal to its surprise, and much to the regret of many of its 
members, found a civil war actually begun. It saw Massa- 
chusetts with an independent government, and New Hamp- 
shire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut quite ready to follow 
its example. Messages were arriving from the Massachu- 
setts Assembly with fateful requests. 

What would Congress do? Would it ignore the state 
of the country and again humbly petition the king, or would 
it take charge of affairs, assume leadership, and proceed to 
direct the public business? No questions could be graver 
than these. Yet Congress was a peculiar body. Its mem- 
bers were elected by the assemblies and not directly by the 
people. It was created by the assemblies. It had no laws 
or constitution to guide it. Whatever it did must be 
approved or disapproved in the end by the assemblies. 
But its members knew the assemblies and believed that they 
would support them. More than this, the course of afTairs 
in Massachusetts and the tone of public opinion in other 
colonies confirmed Congress in the belief that the whole 
countr}^ would support its actions. Because of the power 
of this public sentiment, Congress decided to act as the 



1775] BUNKER HILL 163 

chief governing body in the country. The authority of this 
body of men was, therefore, chiefly due to four things: 
the character of the men who composed it, the circum- 
stances under which they met, the direct support of the 
assemblies, and the confidence of the people. 

After spending a month in careful investigation and 
discussion of public matters, Congress decided to assume 
the direction and control of them. It formally adopted the 
troops about Boston as the continental army, and chose 
one of its own members as commander-in-chief. The 
motion was made by John Adams of Massachusetts, and 
George Washington was unanimously elected. He had 
distinguished himself in the French war, but he was not 
chosen simply because of this or because of his high char- 
acter, but also because he came from the most populous 
colony, and because he possessed the confidence of its lead- 
ing men, and would thus bring powerful support to the 
common cause. He accepted the appointment on June 
1 6th in a modest speech, and with his habitual promptness, 
was on the way to Boston five days later. He had ridden 
scarcely two hours from Philadelphia before he was met by 
great news. 

General William Howe with more regiments had arrived 
in Boston the last of April, and had taken command. The 
first thing for him to do was to gain possession of all the 
approaches to the city and all controlling points. Behind 
Charlestown rose two small hills, known as Bunker Hill and 
Breed's Hill, the latter nearer the town, and the arm of the 
bay separating it from Boston. These hills commanded 
both towns and the bay. Howe prepared to take posses- 
sion of them. Knowing his purpose, the Americans fore- 
stalled him by sending Colonel Prescott, with twelve 
hundred men, early on the night of June 16, to fortify 
Bunker Hill. He passed on and threw up earthworks on 
Breed's Hill, which was almost in musket range of the 
British ships. 

Howe quickly detected the danger he was in from Pres- 
cott's position. In the morning, paying no attention to 
the cannon-balls whistling among them from the ships, the 
Americans completed their earthworks, and also built outer 



164 INDEPENDENCE DECLARED [1775 

intrenchments, southward from the hill, well to the water's 
edge. Promptly Howe prepared to drive out the patriots. 
Twenty-five hundred regulars were landed at the foot of the 
hill and ordered to take the works by storm. Up the steep 
and rocky hill they poured like a flame. "Wait till you 
see the whites of their eyes," was Prescott's order, "then 
fire." When they were within a rifle's length, out poured 
a volley. Scores of the British lay dead in windrows; but 
the greater part were in full flight down the hill. Their 
officers rallied them, put them into order with their swords, 
and charged again. Another deadly volley, another flight 
to the water's edge. Again they rallied ; again they reached 
the intrenchments, but only a few shots were fired; the 
Americans had exhausted their ammunition. They clubbed 
their muskets and boat back the enemy ; they hurled stones 
and fought hand to hand ; but overpowered by numbers, ex- 
hausted by their digging all night and fighting all day, they 
began to retreat, and the British held the hill. But a thou- 
sand British soldiers lay dead. This was the news that met 
Washington. What though Howe had caused Charleston 
to be fired during the fight, and it had been destroyed ; or 
that Prescott had been beaten back? The patriots had 
proved themselves good fighters. Washington was satisfied 
with this fact. The battle of Bunker Hill, as it was called, 
encouraged the Americans ever}'where. Had there been 
powder and ball in plenty, they said, Howe's troops would 
never have reached the top of the hill. So Prescott's defeat 
was equal to a victor^-, after all. 

Beneath a noble elm-tree which still stands at Cam- 
bridge, Washington took command of the continental army 
on July 3, 1775. ^^ saw before him brave men. about 
fifteen thousand of the youth of New England, each with 
his flint-lock and powder-horn, and a few wearing the dress 
of militiamen. This motley company must be trained and 
equipped to fight the British regulars, "the first soldiers of 
Europe." 

flaking his headquarters in the noble mansion famed 
in after years as the home of Henr^' Wadsworth Longfellow, 
Washington spent nearly nine months, not only in drilling 
his army, but in co-operating with Congress in organizing 



1776] BOSTON EVACUATED 165 

the military department, in collecting all kinds of supplies, 
and in keeping the British army, meanwhile, closely shut 
up in Boston. 

Though Congress had adopted an army and appointed 
a commander-in-chief, and Bunker Hill had been fought, 
the majority of its members still hoped and looked for peace. 
Once more it prepared and in August sent forth a petition 
to the king, but he refused even to look at it. He pro- 
claimed the Americans "rebels," and he issued orders for 
troops to put down the rebellion. Enough Englishmen 
did not volunteer, and he hired troops, about twenty thou- 
sand in all, from several German princes, of whom the Duke 
of Brunswick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, supplied the 
greater part. When this news reached America, it put an 
end to all ideas of reconciliation. What could be expected 
of a king who would hire foreigners to fight his own sub- 
jects? The name "Hessian" became hateful to Americans; 
and as the king's conduct became known to them, inde- 
pendence began openly to be discussed. 

The importance of Quebec during the French wars, the 
refusal of the Canadians to join with the other colonists, 
and the danger that Sir Guy Carleton, governor of Canada, 
might invade New York over the old route by Lake Cham- 
plain, led Congress to send two expeditions into Canada. 
General Richard Montgomery led one, by the way of the 
lake, and captured Montreal. Benedict Arnold, starting 
from Boston, made a forced march through the Maine 
wilderness, and after incredible hardships his men reached 
Quebec in the heart of winter, and were joined by Mont- 
gomery. On the night of December 31. they assaulted 
the city and forced an entrance. Montgomery' was killed, 
Arnold was badly wounded, and the attack failed. The 
Americans were forced to retreat, and no more expeditions 
were made into Canada. 

South of Boston lay Dorchester Heights. After due 
preparation. Washington, in March, boldly seized and forti- 
fied them, and had Boston at his mercy. Rather than 
repeat the costly experiment of Bunker Hill, Howe evacu- 
ated the city on March 17, 1776, and sailed with his army 
to Halifax. The people of New England had fought for 



i66 INDEPENDENCE DECLARED [1776 

their rights successfully. Distinguished generals and troops 
sent to conquer them had been forced to flee. The four 
New England colonies were now independent of king and 
Parliament. But General Howe was not likely to remain 
long in Halifax. As Washington believed that New York 
would be the next point of attack, he moved his army to 
the Brooklyn Hills and intrenched there to defend the city. 

Howe's flight removed all doubt in New England of the 
right and the success of independence. In the middle 
colonies, feeling was less intense. In the southern colonies, 
opinion was much divided. The Tories were strong, 
especially in New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. 
But the king's policy had weakened them. Lord Dun- 
more, royal governor of Virginia, after failing to raise an 
insurrection of the slaves, was driven away, but before he 
sailed for England the fleet to which he had fled burned 
Norfolk. This revengeful act converted many Virginians 
into Americans. During May and June, the assemblies of 
New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Virginia declared that 
by the act of the king in proclaiming the Americans rebels, 
in closing their ports and hiring soldiers to fight them, the 
colonies were left without a government. As New Jersey 
expressed it, in its constitution adopted at Burlington in 
July, 1776, the king had violated the compact of govern- 
ment, and his authority was at an end. So the thirteen 
colonies declared that they were henceforth "free and inde- 
pendent states." 

On the 15th of May, Congress came to a like conclu- 
sion, and in reply to requests for advice from some colonies, 
it advised all to form state governments for themselves. 
When the 1st of June came, everybody felt that the neces- 
sity for independence was no longer a matter for discussion. 
There only remained the question, When is the best time 
to declare it? On the 7th of June, Richard Henry Lee 
offered a memorable resolution in Congress, which was 
seconded by John Adams, "that these United Colonies are 
and of right ought to be free and independent states, that 
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, 
and that all political connection between them and the State 
of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved." Lee 



1776] THE DECLARATION 167 

had been instructed by the Virginia Assembly to make such 
a motion, and John Adams had been advocating independ- 
ence for months. The resolution was favored by nearly 
every member, and carried July 2. A committee of five 
was elected to prepare a declaration. It consisted of 
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger 
Sherman, and Robert R. Livingstone. Two years before, 
Jefferson had written a paper declaring the rights of the 
colonies which had attracted much attention both in America 
and in England. He was known to be an accomplished 
political writer, and at the common request of the commit- 
tee, of which he was chairman, he consented to write the 
draft. With slight change, it was adopted on the 4th of 
July. 

The Declaration of Independence contained several 
ideas upon which no nation had ever before attempted to 
found a government ; namely, that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness, and that the people have the right to 
adopt any form of government they choose. On this foun- 
dation of new political truths the people of the United 
States founded their government. 

Copies of the Declaration were sent to all the states. As 
it was made in Philadelphia, the people of that city were 
the first to know its contents. The bell in the State House 
tower rang out the glad news: "Proclaim liberty through- 
out the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." Everywhere 
the Declaration was received with demonstrations of joy. 
It was read to the continental army; it was engrossed on 
the minutes of the assemblies; it was made a part of state 
constitutions, and was published with the laws. 

Congress had issued the Declaration ; the people had 
indorsed it. Would they support it with their lives, their 
fortunes, and their sacred honor? 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC 
1776-1800 

The organization of republican governments by the 
American people was a revolutionary act of the highest 
degree of boldness, which pronounced them traitors or 
patriots, as the fortune of war might determine. The 
transition from colonies to states and from integral parts 
of the United Kingdom to co-ordinated commonwealths of 
a new nation was effected in an orderly manner quite with- 
out parallel in history. This was due to the character of 
the people and the condition of Great Britain and the colo- 
nies at the time. The Anglo-Saxon possesses an unlimited 
capacity for order, which he has displayed to his own and 
the world's highest advantage at critical moments of his- 
tory. In America, the transition from a monarchical to a 
republican form chiefly affected the executive power. The 
legislative had been elective almost from the beginnings of 
government in Virginia, indeed from that July day in 1619 
when there assembled in the church at Jamestown the first 
popular assembly in America. 

In the charter colonies, the governors had been elective 
also, and no greater grievance had found voice in America 
than the forfeiture of colonial charters and the consequent 
deprivation of the power of choosing the executive by 
popular election. In the proprietary colonies, the gov- 
ernor was an hereditary personage; in the royal colonies, he 
was an appointee of the crown. The consequence was the 
same: a continuous popular outcry against the executive 
and a perpetual struggle between him and the representa- 
tives of the people. This somewhat monotonous conten- 
tion constitutes the greater part of colonial political history. 
Democracy had not yet gained sufficient strength to demand 
the popular election of judges, who were removed from the 

168 



1776] AMERICAN CONSERVATISM 169 

turmoil of the colonial struggle by the terms of their office, 
which was for good behavior, and by the manner of their 
choice, which was by executive appointment. The tran- 
sition from colony to state signified that the principle of 
representation should be applied henceforth to the execu- 
tive, and as time proved, ultimately, to the judiciary. But 
the popular election of judges was not advocated in the 
eighteenth century and did not become **a political reform" 
until the nineteenth was wellnigh half gone. 

The American Revolution consisted, in its civil changes, 
in the organization of a republican form of government in 
the place of a form partly republican and partly monarchi- 
cal. Because the monarchical element was weak, the tran- 
sition was easily made. In thinking of the civil transfor- 
mation, one must not confuse incidents of war with changes 
in civil affairs. The colonists did not break with the past 
when they took up civil government in 1776, They did 
not disturb the existing republican foundation. They 
brought executive and administrative functions, as they 
understood them, into conformity with legislative, and thus 
established republican forms of government according to 
the political standards of the eighteenth century. 

The civil experience of the colonies, since 1619, was the 
basis of the new structure. For a century and a half, laws 
had been passed by the assemblies, and most of them were 
in print. From time to time the assemblies had formulated 
resolutions and declarations embodying their understanding 
of the principles of government, which had become the 
common thought of the people. No assembly hesitated to 
express its official opinion of the conduct of imperial affairs. 

As we approach the year of the Stamp Act, 1765, and 
pass through the following decade, the declarations of the 
assemblies become a political commentary on the acts of 
Parliament, the conduct of the ministry, and the powers 
and prerogatives of the crown. For a dozen years prior to 
the actual clash of arms, the colonies had been in a danger- 
ously critical mood. As we would now say, they had 
entered upon a course leading either to autonomy or to the 
pains and penalties of treason. As early as 1765, a con- 
vention of delegates, known as the Stamp Act Congress, 



170 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776 

assembled in New York City, and issued a declaration of 
rights which pointed the way the Americans were going.* 
They owed allegiance to the British crown and all subordi- 
nation to Parliament because they were liege subjects and 
entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of native- 
born Englishmen ; no taxes, therefore, could be imposed 
upon them save with their own consent, given personally, 
or by their representatives. Geographical position, as well 
as prevailing sentiment, forbade their representation in the 
House of Commons. Their only representatives were their 
delegates, elected to their own assemblies, and no taxes 
had ever been imposed or could be constitutionally imposed 
on them but by their own legislatures. 

A people who would boldly put forth ideas like these 
were not far from political independence. They were 
already in possession of the foundation of republican forms 
of government. The successful assumption of these forms 
might be made at any time when provocation would make 
it appear that it was to their best interests to declare inde- 
pendence. But political revolutions rest on sound philoso- 
phy, otherwise discontent ends merely in rebellion. In 
attempting to measure the forces which contributed to the 
American Revolution, we must not overlook Montesquieu 
and Blackstone, Harrington, Sidney, Penn, and More; 
nor for a moment can we lose sight of that immeasurable 
influence embodied in the English Bible. The effect of the 
Bible in America was paramount in encouraging every man 
to think and act for himself, being responsible to God rather 
than to man. Undoubtedly, as the Bible was the book 
most generally read, it was the source of that spirit of liberty 
which possessed the land; it was the guide and counselor 
of the wayfaring man ; its teachings inevitably bred democ- 
racy and independence. 

Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, published in Geneva in 
1748, became at once a manual of politics, and in America 
the first book of government. It may be safely said that 
ever\' man of eminence in public life in America during the 
last half of the eighteenth century was familiar with Alon- 
tesquieu. His principles of government and the deductions 

♦Preston's Documents, 188-192. 



1776] PRINCIPLES OF ACTION 171 

which American statesmen drew from them became the 
"higher hiw" of the age. When Congress issued an appeal 
to the inhabitants of Quebec,* at the outset of the war, 
Montesquieu was cited as a higher authority than the Brit- 
ish Constitution. King George and his advisers viewed 
this appeal to a "higher law" with contempt rather than 
alarm, just as a century afterward Calhoun and his follow- 
ers viewed Seward's famous utterance on the admission of 
California.! But in revolutionary times there is alwaj's an 
appeal to a "higher law." In the opening years of the 
American Revolution, it was to "the principles ot republi- 
can government," and "the rights of man" ; in 1850, it was 
to "the spirit of the Constitution" and the "principles of 
our civil institutions"; ten years later, it was to preserve 
the Union. These historic terms signify that forms of gov- 
ernment are subject to subtle correctives, and it is well for a 
country when those to whom its public business is intrusted 
are capable of detecting the signs of the times, and of adjust- 
ing the form of government to the wants of the state. 
Montesquieu, to the statesmen of the eighteenth century 
who gave form to our republican institutions, was a political 
philosopher and friend. He suggested political theories, pos- 
sible civil courses, and probable economic consequences. 

Twenty years after Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, ap- 
peared Blackstone's Commentaries. They at once became 
the legal text-book of the English-speaking race. Black- 
stone's teachings were practical; Montesquieu's, theoreti- 
cal; Blackstone was constructive and helpful to men upon 
whom the duty of organizing a government on a popular 
basis had come suddenly. It might seem that a writer so 
ultra-monarchical as Blackstone would be of slight service 
to revolutionary republicans; on the contrary, he aided 
them in putting their ideas into legal form. The first thing 
for a body of revolutionists to do is to secure a legal foun- 
dation for their acts. From a citadel of laws and constitu- 
tions they can issue forth armed with at least the appearance 
of authority, order, and justice. Blackstone taught the 
Americans how to act constitutionally. In his introduc- 

* Journals of Congress, I, 58-65. 

t Works of William H. Seward, I, 66, 74, 108, 130. 



173 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1774 

tion, which treats "Of the Nature of Laws in General." he 
discusses the *' nature of society iuid civil government; and 
the nalunil inherent rii^ht that belong^s to the sovcreii:nity 
of a state, wherever that sovereii:^nty be lodged, of making 
and enforcing laws." The only true and natural foun- 
dations of society, he continues, are the wants .ind fears of 
individu;Us. The sense of weakness and imperfection keeps 
mankind together, demonstrates the necessity of union, and 
**is the solid and natur.il foundation as well as the cement 
of civil society. And this is what we mean by the origin.U 
contract of society, which, though perhaps in no instiuice 
it has been form.illy expressed at the hrst institution of a 
state, yet in nature and revison must alwsiys be understood 
and implied in the ver\- act of iissoci.Uing together; namely, 
that the whole should prv>tect all its fkirts. and that ever\- 
p;»rt should pay obexlience to the will of the whole; or in 
other words, that the community should guard the rights 
of each individual member, and that ^^in return for this pro- 
tectionli each individu.il should submit to the laws of the 
community; without which submission of all it was imix>s- 
sible that protection should be certainly extended to aiiy. ' ** 
This. then. w;is the cv^mp..ict thev^r\- of government which 
our early statesmen found fully set forth by English author- 
ity, and most happily applicable to America. Early in 
1 774. the leaders of the revolution in Massiichusetts accused 
the king of viokiting the cvMnjxict of government by military* 
inter\ention in the .iflairs of that province.f County cc>n- 
ventions p;issed formal resolutions which set forth the \io- 
lation. and these so-c;illed "resolves'* were vigorv>usI\- 
cireulated thn>ugh the province and among other cv^lonies, 
Otis and his associates wished to m.ike out th.u the king 
w;\s the agv:Tessor. and thus put him in the wrv^ng. To ;U1 
except the loyalists, it seemed that the leader? had made 
out their case. Blackstone was a weaker authority for the 
compact theory than was the course of e\-ents in America. 
The Burlington convention, in fmming a prv»\*isional con- 
stitution for New Jersey, in 1776. declared that as '"all the 

* BljK:tstv>ne's C«>mmeiiKiries. I, 47. 

t KmiituxI of Fach TivvSncuil Congirss ot Ma<is.tchi»j*ttsk i — 4-'"v. 
Appendix, l^veeduig^ oi the CooTttouons oi the re>.»|>ic iu ihe Coumses. 



1770] M\v iFRSKv roNsri n riON xy\ 

const itutiotuU .uithoiit\- over possessed by (ho kitii^s of Cnoat 
iMit.iin over those oolonios. or their <,>ther dotniiiions. was 
by compact, derived troin xhc people .uui held of tluMU. iov 
the coiimion interest of the whole society, allci^iance and 
protection are. in the i\ature of thin^is. reciprocal ties, each 
equally depending;- vipon the other and liable to be dissoKed 
b\- the other's bein^; refused or withdrawn. "* And .is ("!eori;c 
111. had refused protection to the Liood iH\^ple o( these 
colonies, and by .issentiui;' to sundry .icts of the Hiitish 
r.irliantent .ittenipted to subject then) tv^ the absolute 
donunion of that body, and liad also niade war upon theni. 
in the most cruel ai\d unitatviral mantier. for no otliei excuse 
than that they had assorted their just rights, all civil author- 
ity under him was necessarily at an end. and a dissolution 
of i^overnment in each colony had consequent 1\- taken place. 
This is a tolorabh- cle.u- staUMuent of po^^ulaI so\ eieii^ntw 
Its authors could i\ot tn\d .uithorit\- for it in l>l.ick<;tone : 
but once admittiui^- that the compact of i^overnment had 
been broken. they and Hl.ickstone could tra\ el .iloui; tOi^ether 
very conifortabh'. 

The next step was to rebuild the state on the b.isis of .i 
comp.ict. at\d this the Inirlinii'ton convention — and its woik 
w as typical of the work doi\e elsewhere in the countr\- — at 
once proceeded to do. and in so doiui^" expressed the domi- 
nant political thoui^ht of America at the time. In the 
deplorable situation oi the colonies, continued the New 
Jersey p.itriots. exposed as the people were to the fur\- of 
a cruel and relentless enemy, some fonw of i^overnment w as 
absolutely necessary, not otily for the preservation of i^ood 
order, but also the more ctTectually to unite the people. And 
enable them to exert their whole force in their ow n neces- 
sary defense; and as the honorable. theContinent.il Con- 
gress, the supreme council of the American colonies, had 
advised the colonies to adopt for themselves. respecti\eK-. 
such iiovernment as would best conduce to their own happi- 
ness and safety, and the well-being of Arnerica in general, 
the representatives of the colony of Xew Jersey. ha\ing" 
been elected by all the counties, in the freest manner, and 
in congress assembled, after mature deliberations, agreed 

*Nc\v Icnjov Constituiion. i~7o, rro.imble. 



174 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776 

upon a set of charter rights and the form of a constitution. 
Thus, from a legal point of view, the people were brought 
from "a state nature" into "civil society," under a "com- 
pact of government." However unphilosophical on analy- 
sis the compact theory of the state may appear, it has held 
its own in this country, and from the beginning lies at the 
basis of our civil institutions. 

In summarizing the Revolution of 1776, it may be said 
that the king and Parliament of England broke the compact 
of government, and freed the colonists from allegiance. 
The Americans then organized new governments for them- 
selves. This is the main defense of the Revolution, from 
an American view of constitutional law. At least it is a 
defense which has never broken down in America. Look- 
ing into the eighteenth-century constitutions framed by the 
states, it will be found that the compact theory is carefully 
defined in several, is implied in all, and later is applied, 
without a moment's interruption, in the legislation of the 
country. In entering upon a constitutional history of our 
country, it is necessary to understand that "the body-politic 
is formed by a voluntary association of individuals. It is 
a social compact by which the whole people covenants with 
each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that 
all shall be governed by certain laws for the common 
good."* This notion of government is readily understood 
for practical purposes, and permits an easy application in 
the administration of public business. Doubtless for these 
reasons it is retained. 

The change from colonial to state governments was, as 
declared by New Jersey, partly at the suggestion of Con- 
gress, but it was hastened by military events and by a 
change in opinion within the colonies themselves. In May, 
1775, Massachusetts asked Congress for advice in reorgan- 
izing its provincial government. The reply was, to organize 
civil affairs as they had been under their charter.f This 
was done, and the government thus instituted continued 

* Massachusetts Constitution, 1780, Preamble. 

tThe Massachusetts charter of 1626 which provided for a represent- 
ative democracy. By the charter of 1692, the executive was approved 
by the crown. 



1776] NEW HAMPSHIRE, VIRGINIA 175 

until supplanted by that under the constitution of 1780. 
Other colonies asked similar advice, and in November, 1775, 
Congress counseled all the colonies to form governments 
adapted to their condition. 

New Hampshire was the first to act.* Delegates met 
at Exeter on the 21st of December and made the first con- 
stitution for the state. Calling themselves a congress, the 
members organized as a house of representatives and 
chose twelve persons members of an upper house. The 
delegates thus acted" as a legislature. On the loth of June, 
1778, a second convention met at Concord, but its work was 
rejected by the people. A third met at Exeter, in June, 
1 78 1, and was in session two years and a half. The con- 
stitution it framed was formally approved by the people in 
town-meetings, and went into effect June 2, 1784. On 
November ist. South Carolina met in provincial congress 
and drew up a state constitution. It continued in force 
till January 5, 1778, when the general assembly promul- 
gated a new one, which continued till 1790. On the 3d of 
June of that year, a convention assembled at Columbia, and 
soon promulgated a new constitution, which, slightly 
amended in later years, was in force till 1865. 

In Virginia, the Williamsburg convention assembled 
in April, 1776, and framed a constitution which was promul- 
gated on the 29th of June. It continued in force till 1830. 
The Burlington convention, in New Jersey, acted also as 
a legislature, and promulgated a constitution on the 2d of 
July, 1776. It continued in force sixty-eight years. The 
people of Delaware elected delegates to a constitutional 
convention on the 19th of August, 1776. They met at 
Newcastle eight days later, and after a session of twenty- 
eight days, promulgated the first constitution of that state. 
It continued till 1792, when it was supplanted by a new 
constitution, which continued until 1831. The Pennsyl- 
vania convention met in Philadelphia on the 15th of July, 
1776, and having completed a constitution, promulgated it 
on the 28th of September. It continued in force thirteen 

*For the bibliography of the eighteenth-century state constitutional 
conventions, see my " Constitutional History of the American People," 
Vol. I, pp. 29-31. Also, notes to Chapter III, 



176 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776 

years, and was succeeded by the constitution of 1 789-90, 
which continued till 1838. North Carolina met in provin- 
cial congress at Halifax, November 12, 1776, and the dele- 
gates ratified a constitution on the i8th of December; 
amended in 1835 and 1854, it continued till 1863. 

Georgia organized a temporary government in April, 
1776. Delegates, elected in parishes and districts, from the 
1st to the loth of September of that year, assembled, 
chiefly for military purposes, but framed and promulgated 
a constitution February 5, 1777. Eleven years later its 
defects were remedied in part by a convention assembled 
at Augusta, November 24th. This body took also into 
consideration the question of ratifying the Constitution of 
the United States. It approved the national instrument 
unanimously, and drew up a state constitution, which was 
submitted to another convention, called to meet January 4, 
1789. A third convention passed on this instrument, and 
having made some changes, ratified and promulgated it on 
the 6th of May. Nine years later, on the 30th of May, the 
third constitution of the state was promulgated by a con- 
vention, and continued until 1865. 

In all the colonies there was more or less anti-revolu- 
tionary feeling, which was notably strong in New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and heard in protest in New 
Hampshire, North Carolina, and Georgia. This opposition 
retarded the formation of a state government in New York. 
The congress of that state, on the 31st day of May, 1776, 
made provision for the election of a succeeding one which 
should draw up a state constitution, but so precarious was 
the condition of public affairs that it was not until Sunday, 
the 20th of April, a year later, that a- constitution, chiefly 
the work of John Jay, was adopted and promulgated, at 
Kingston. Amended in 1801, it continued in force till 
1 82 1, and became the foundation of the later constitutions 
of the commonwealth. Vermont was in an anomalous 
position. It was claimed by Massachusetts, New Hamp- 
shire, and New York. Meanwhile, it claimed to be inde- 
pendent, and its delegates assembled at Dorset July 24, 
1776, at Westminster in the following January, and at 
Windham on the 2d of July, where, on the 8th, a consti- 



1776] RHODE ISLAND, KENTUCKY 177 

tution was completed and promulgated. Frequently revised, 
it has continued in force to the present time. 

The general assembly of Connecticut transformed colony 
to commonwealth by the act of October 10, 1776; Rhode 
Island had passed a similar act on the 4th of May. Massa- 
chusetts, the first to suggest a change from colony to state, 
was the last to settle on a form of government. The general 
court, as the colonial legislature was called, submitted a 
draft of a constitution to the people on the 4th of March, 

1778, but it was rejected, chiefly because it had not been 
made by proper authority. A convention, especially chosen 
to form an organic law, assembled on the ist of September, 

1779. A constitution, chiefly the work of John Adams, 
was reported, was approved by the convention, and also by 
the electors, and was officially proclaimed on the i6th of 
May, 1780. Amended thirty-four times, it continues to 
be the supreme law of the commonwealth. As early as 1 784, 
the people of Kentucky sought separation from Virginia, 
and twice assembled in convention, at Danville, to organize 
a state government. On the 2d of April, 1792, a fourth 
convention assembled there, and on the 19th adopted and 
promulgated a constitution. Seven years later, on the 22d 
of July, another convention met at Frankford, and having 
completed its work, promulgated a new constitution on the 
7th of August, to take effect from the ist of January, 1800. 
It was not supplanted by another for fifty years. 

Nor were the people of Kentucky the only pioneers 
beyond the mountains who succeeded in building a new 
state before the century closed. Western North Carolina, 
called, variously, Washington County, the District of Wash- 
ington, East Tennessee, Wautauga, and Frankland, or 
Franklin, had determined to assert its independence. As 
early as 1784, a provisional government was instituted, 
though no written constitution had been framed. In 
December of that year, at Jonesboro, a constitutional con- 
vention drew up a plan of government which was to be sub- 
mitted to a second convention, at Greeneville, in November 
of the year following. It promulgated a constitution, and 
organized the state of Frankland, which continued five 
years. On the nth of January, 1790, a convention assem- 



173 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776-1800 

bled at Knoxville, and on the 6th of February promulgated 
the constitution which continued in force till 1834. Ver- 
mont, Kentucky, and Tennessee were the new states of the 
eighteenth century. The first was admitted into the Union 
March 4, 1791; the second, June i, 1792, and the third, 
June I, 1796. 

The swift change from colony to state was effected 
almost wholly by legislatures, acting as constitutional con- 
ventions. Delaware and Massachusetts called conventions 
specially to prepare constitutions. In all the states, save 
one, legislative and convention functions were confused, 
and the constitution was promulgated, instead of being 
formally ratified by the electors at the polls. Some of these 
eighteenth-century instruments were short-lived. New 
Hampshire had new constitutions in 1776, 1784, and 1792; 
Georgia, in 1777, 1789, and 1798; South Carolina, in 1776, 
1778, and 1790: Vermont, in 1776, 1786, 1791, and 1793; 
Delaware, in 1776 and 1792; Pennsylvania, in 1776 and 
1 790; Kentucky, in 1792 and 1799. The states that 
adopted but one constitution during the eighteenth century 
were: New York, 1777; Massachusetts, 1780; New Jersey, 
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, 1776; and Ten- 
nessee, in 1796. During the twenty-four years from 1776 to 
1800, the sixteen states adopted twenty-six constitutions. 
To this mass of organic law must be added the two acts of 
national union — the Articles of Confederation of 1781 and 
the Constitution of 1789. 

Whether a state constitution was made by a convention 
or by a legislature; was promulgated, or ratified by popu- 
lar vote, gives but slight suggestion of its character. That 
it was made by a legislature might be due to the* stress of 
the times; that it was promulgated might mean no more 
than the fact of public confidence in the body that made it. 
We must turn to the instruments themselves in order to 
ascertain the nature of the republican form of government 
thus set up. And first it will be well to agree upon the 
tests to which these constitutions shall be subjected. These 
tests may be of a kind particularly applicable to a revolu- 
tionary period, or of a general character, and such as may 
be applied at any time to a republican form of government. 



1776-1800] THE FRAMERS 179 

Doubtless it will be most satisfactory to apply tests which 
we would now use in determining the character of a new 
constitution. We know almost nothing of what was said 
in any of the conventions that made state constitutions 
during the eighteenth century. We have the texts of the 
instruments, the names of those who co-operated in pro- 
ducing them, the laws and judicial decisions later based 
upon them, and the writings of many who assisted in fram- 
ing them. The first convention to preserve and print its 
debates was that of Massachusetts, in 1820; the second, 
that of New York, in 1821, and the third, that of Virginia, 
in 1829. Madison's notes on the federal convention were 
not published till 1841. 

About seventeen hundred men participated in the work 
of framing the eighteenth-century constitutions. Five 
became Presidents of the United States: Washington and 
Madison, who belonged to the federal convention; Jeffer- 
son, who was elected a delegate to the Virginia convention 
of 1776, and whose Declaration of Independence, formally 
prefixed to the constitution of New York, a year later, 
became in substance an integral part of each of the twenty- 
eight organic acts of the period ; John Adams, who was a 
member of the Massachusetts convention of 1779, and 
wrote almost the entire text of the instrument it adopted, 
and Andrew Jackson, who was a member of the Tennessee 
convention of 1796. Tradition asserts that his motion gave 
the name to the state. Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, 
afterward in turn chief justices of the United States, were 
distinguished delegates: Jay, to the New York convention 
of 1777, and he was the principal author of the constitution 
of that commonwealth; Rutledge and Ellsworth, to the 
federal convention. To this also belonged Elbridge Gerry, 
who became fourth Vice-President. Of the seventeen 
hundred delegates, upward of three hundred served in 
Congress, and nearly twice this number in the state legis- 
latures. Seven became associate justices of the United 
States Supreme Court. Nine served as cabinet ministers, 
and a greater number as governors and as members of the 
state judiciary. Twenty-seven were signers of the Decla- 
ration of Independence; fourteen signed the Articles of 



i8o FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776-1800 

Confederation, and thirty-nine signed the Constitution of 
the United States. Jolin Witherspoon, who signed the 
Declaration and tlie Articles, also signed the first constitu- 
tion of New Jersey. Franklin and George Clymer signed 
the Declaration, the first constitution of Pennsylvania, and 
the Constitution of the United States. 

Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania convention 
of 1776, and conspicuous in the authorship of the instru- 
ment it framed. George Read, who with Franklin had 
signed the Declaration and the national Constitution, signed 
the first constitution of Delaware as president of the con- 
vention. James Wilson, one of the signers, also signed the 
Constitution of the United States and the second constitu- 
tion of Pennsylvania. Gouverneur Morris, prominent, with 
Jay, in the New York convention, later signed the Articles 
of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States. 
It is somewhat remarkable that no one delegate signed the 
Declaration, the Articles, the national Constitution, and 
a state constitution. Roger Sherman signed the first three; 
but Connecticut held no constitutional convention, else, 
doubtless, his name would have been found afifixed to its 
work. Richard Henry Lee might have stood in this unique 
place had he accepted his election to the federal conven- 
tion, for he had already signed the Declaration, the con- 
stitution of Virginia, and the Articles of Confederation. 

But this does not exhaust the list of eminent names. 
Omitting, for the present, that galaxy whose political wis- 
dom shines in the federal convention, let us pass in review 
some of the names found on the records of the state con- 
ventions. Among the members of the New Hampshire 
convention of 1776 were Matthew Thornton, one of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence, three who were 
delegates in Congress, and Governor Meshech Weare. 
John Ilurd is said to have written the constitution, and 
General John Sullivan to have made most important sug- 
gestions. No state assembly of the period surpassed the 
Williamsburg convention in its list of distinguished men. 
There sat Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas 
Nelson, and Chancellor Wythe, signers of the Declaration 
which Jefferson, a fellow delegate, had recently written. 



1 776-1800] THE FRAMERS 181 

Lee and Harvie and Banister were to sign the Articles of 
Confederation. Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph, John 
Blair, George Mason, Wythe, Lee, Nelson, and Madison 
were to be chosen delegates to the federal convention. 
Nineteen of the members served in the old Congress, and 
twenty-one were to sit in the congresses that should assemble 
under the Constitution. Lee and Henry Tazewell were to 
serve as United States Senators; Henry and Jefferson, and 
Nelson and Harrison, Randolph and James Wood, were 
to be chosen governors of the state. Jefferson and Madison 
were to serve, each two terms in the presidency, after having 
served as secretaries of state. Randolph was to be chosen 
by Washington the first Attorney-General, and Blair was to 
be appointed to the Supreme Court. 

Of those who signed the New Jersey constitution, 
Witherspoon, John Hart, and Abraham Clark were signers, 
two days later, of the Declaration of Independence. 
Witherspoon was to sign the Articles of Confederation; 
Paterson, nine times governor of the state, was to sign the 
Constitution and be appointed by Washington, with Blair, 
an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Paterson, Dick- 
enson, and Frelinghuysen were to become United States 
Senators. Eleven of the members were to become dele- 
gates to the old Congress and twelve to the new. Of the 
thirty members of the first Delaware convention, George 
Read was most eminent. With him Van Dyke, McKean, 
and Evans served in the old Congress, and Van Dyke, 
McKean, and Dickenson signed the Articles of Confeder- 
ation. Read and Bassett signed the national Constitution, 
and later became United States Senators. McKean became 
chief justice of Pennsylvania. The men who gave first rank 
to Pennsylvania in the federal convention also belonged 
to its state conventions. Franklin and Clymer, Smith, 
Wilson, and Ross signed the Declaration of Independence; 
Franklin and Mifflin, Clymer and Wilson signed the national 
Constitution. Eight served in the old Congress and ten 
under the Constitution, Franklin and Mififlin served as 
governors. General Mifflin, James Wilson, and Thomas 
McKean were members of the state convention of 1789. 
Wilson's services in the federal convention were unsur- 



i82 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776-1800 

passed, and posterity has discovered, within recent years, 
that he ranks with Jay and Marshall and Madison and Web- 
ster as a great constitutional lawyer. 

The list of delegates to the North Carolina convention 
of 1776 includes William Hooper and Joseph Hewes, who 
had recently signed the Declaration of Independence, and 
Cornelius Harnett, who was to sign the Articles of Con- 
federation, Six of the members had signed the famous 
Mecklenburg resolutions. Charles Robeson, John Carter, 
and John Haile were from Wautauga, that new land beyond 
the mountains. Samuel Ashe became governor. Ten 
members served in the Congress of the Confederation, and 
sixteen were to serve in the national legislature. It is 
said that the constitution was the work of Richard Caswell, 
the president of the convention, assisted by Thomas Jones 
and Thomas Burke. Memucan Hunt lived to sign the 
treaty with Mexico in 1838. 

The members of the New York convention of 1777 did 
not all attend at one time. It was a peripatetic body, not 
always out of sight of British troops. Philip Livingston 
and Lewis Morris had signed the Declaration; James Duane 
and W'illiam Duer were to sign the Articles, and Gouver- 
neur Morris, who also signed the Articles, was, as a dele- 
gate from Pennsylvania, to sign the Constitution of the 
United States. Morris and John Sloss Hobart w^ere to 
serve in the United States Senate. Sixteen of the dele- 
gates served in the old Congress. John Jay resigned the 
office of chief justice of the United States to become gov- 
ernor of New York. Duane and Hobart became United 
States district judges. Of the Vermont conventions, that 
at Dorset, in 1776, enrolled Ira Allen, the historian of the 
state; Thomas Chittenden, later governor, and Matthew 
Lyon,* whose vote, it has been said, made Jefferson Presi- 
dent. Horatio Allen became a member of the national 
Congress. Moses Robinson became governor of the state. 

The Massachusetts convention of 1779 included in its 

♦He is better known as the victim of the sedition law of 1798, under 
which he was convicted, fined and imprisoned. Twenty years after his 
death, Congress, on July 4, 1840, ordered the fine of $1,060.90 to be repaid 
to his heirs, with interest. 



1776-1800] THE FRAMERS 1S3 

membership John and Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and 
Robert Treat Paine, each of whom had signed the Decla- 
ration of Independence. Hancock, Samuel Adams, and 
Samuel Holten were to sign the Articles, and Nathaniel 
Gorham was to sign the Constitution of the United States. 
Hancock, Samuel Adams, Increase Sumner, James Sulli- 
van, Caleb Strong, and Levi Lincoln became governors; 
Strong and Lincoln, each twice. William Cushing declined 
the of^ce of chief justice of the United States, and Lincoln 
that of associate justice. Theophilus Parsons, perhaps 
best known as a legal writer, served for a short time as 
Attorney-General under John Adams. 

Ten of the delegates served in the old Congress and 
twelve in the national; George Cabot, Benjamin Goodhue, 
and Caleb Strong became United States Senators. Strong 
was a member of the federal convention, but refused to 
sign the Constitution. 

George Nicholas is said to have been the principal author 
of the Kentucky constitution of 1792.* Of his colleagues 
in the second convention at Danville, John Campbell and 
Matthew Walton also became members of Congress. Isaac 
Shelby became the first governor of the state. Robert 
Breckinridge was one of the most distinguished and useful 
members of the convention. The vote on the pro-slavery 
clause of the constitution stood twenty-six to sixteen, and 
among the opposing sixteen were six ministers of the gos- 
pel. The Frankford convention of 1799 included the 
president, A. S. Bullitt, John Adair, Richard Taylor, 
Thomas Clay, Samuel Taylor, William Steele, and Caleb 
Wallace, who were members of the convention of 1792. 
Three delegates became members of Congress. Adair, 
John Breckinridge, and Buckner Thurston became United 
States Senators. Henry Junes was appointed United States 
district judge. Breckinridge, foremost in the passage of 

*The Virginia House of Delegates (resolutions, November 22, 1790) 
and the Senate (resolutions, December 8, 1790), instructed the Virginia 
Senators in Congress — William Grayson and Richard Henry Lee — to 
use their utmost efforts to carry into effect the resolutions of the first 
Kentucky convention, held at Danville, asking for separation from Vir- 
ginia. The first effort began in 1784. Acts of Virginia Assembly, 
Richmond, 1790, p. 59. 



184 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [i 776-1800 

the Kentucky resolutions, an intimate friend of Jefferson, 
became Attorney-General under him. Felix Grundy was 
elected chief justice of the state. Later, removing to Ten- 
nessee, he became a member of Congress, United States 
Senator, and Attorney-General under Van Buren, and died 
a member of the Senate. The Knoxville convention of 
1796 chose William Blount its president. He had signed 
the Constitution of the United States as a delegate from 
North Carolina. John Adair served as governor. Eight 
members were elected to Congress, and William Cocke, 
Blount, Andrew Jackson, and Joseph Anderson became 
United States Senators. Among the delegates was W. C. 
C. Claiborne, whose history is later a part of that of Louisi- 
ana. It is said that the first Tennessee constitution was 
chiefly the work of Charles McClung. 

The personnel of the conventions from 1776 to 1800 
makes more clear the character of the work done. For 
whatever test be applied to that work, the men who did it 
must be considered as a most important element. It is 
evident that the membership includes the ablest statesmen 
of the time, and among them are Jefferson, Franklin, Madi- 
son, Jay, and Adams, who rank with the law-givers of the 
world. If the work of ancient law-makers seems greater, 
it may be because we know less about them. It must be 
remembered that the constitutional work of the eighteenth 
century in America was chiefly the work of committees. 
That the committee should turn its work over to Jay or 
Adams, or adopt the work of John Hurd, in New Hamp- 
shire; George Mason, in Virginia; Richard Caswell, in 
North Carolina; Thomas Young, in Vermont, or Charles 
McClung, in Tennessee, proves the weight of the constitu- 
tional opinions of these men. 

While the constitutions were based on the civil policy 
of the colonies, there were notable instances of adaptation 
and copying from one state by another. The New England 
constitutions form a unit, of which that of Massachusetts 
may be taken as a type. But Vermont is a remarkable 
exception. The boundary dispute with adjoining states 
led the people to hold the constitutions of these states in 
disfavor. Thus Vermont, almost by accident, found a 



1776-1800] THE CONSTITUTIONS 185 

model in Pennsylvania, and largely through the influence 
of Thomas Young, a citizen of Philadelphia, who had 
earnestly advocated the independence of the state in a 
pamphlet, advised calling a convention, and held up the 
constitution of Pennsylvania, of 1776, as a model. The 
Vermont conventions accepted the suggestions, and turning 
freely to Pennsylvania sources, worked out an instrument 
in many parts a transcript of the constitution of this distant 
state.* Pennsylvania and Delaware, long united under 
Penn, had much in common, and their constitutions fol- 
lowed the same concepts of the republican form, Mary- 
land was politically apart from the other states, and its first 
constitution may be read with the unusual interest that it 
is the most complete written expression of a working gov- 
ernment of the times. It is the longest of the constitutions 
of the period. It transcribes local government in its details 
as does no other fundamental law of the period. 

Virginia, parent of states, was also parent of the con- 
stitutions. Those of Kentucky were its eldest-born. North 
Carolina, like the government of the Carolina colony, was 
unique, and like Virginia, was a parent of the west. Wau- 
tauga, Frankland,f or as we know it, Tennessee, copied from 
this original as they copied the laws enacted by its author- 
ity. South Carolina influenced Georgia and vied with it 
in the number of new constitutions during the century. 
Generally speaking, the democratic elements in these con- 
stitutions multiplied and strengthened as one went from 
Georgia northward. Comparisons are dangerous, if not 
odious, but it may be said that the constitutions of South 
Carolina and New Hampshire present the sharpest civil con- 
trasts of this period. 

It would be expected that a body of organic law drawn 
up by men of the character, attainments, and varied public 
services which distinguish the framers of these eighteenth- 
century constitutions would possess all those qualities which 
gave permanency and value to political undertakings. 

*See The Constitution of the State of Vermont, Brattleborough, 
C. H. Davenport & Co , 1891, pp. 40-44. 

tFor the constitution of Frankland and a sketch of its history, see 
The American Historical Magazine for January, 1896, Nashville, Tenn. 



i86 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776-1800 

Whatever imperfections might appear must be accepted as 
concessions to human nature. Republican government had 
a new birth in a new land, and was to be the great experi- 
ment of the age. The American constitutions were made 
in revolutionary times. They were adaptations, of theory 
and practice, to the conditions of a new nation. The men 
who made them possessed, in the aggregate, experience in 
every civil ofifice in America — executive, legislative, judicial, 
and administrative. It is to be noted that the actual work 
of preparing this mass of organic law was done by a few 
men, we may say less than fifty, and probably, with safety, 
less than half that number. A few great names shine forth 
against a background of hundreds long since obscure or 
forgotten. The work in revolutionary times is usually done 
by a handful of men. The men whose names are identified 
with our early history were also foremost in services to their 
states. The constitutions and laws of the commonwealths, 
at that critical time when the transition from colonies was 
made, are evidence, often overlooked, of the services which 
our earlier statesmen rendered, and of the burden of grati- 
tude which posterity owes them. 

The twenty-six constitutions of the states consisted, in 
each instance, of two parts: a body of civil maxims, usually 
called the bill of rights, and a body of administrative 
provisions, classified as executive, legislative, and judicial. 
In the second part were inserted clauses of particular inter- 
est to the state; for instance, definitions of its boundaries, 
as in Vermont and Tennessee, or clauses, which, strictly, 
were like acts of a legislature. For from the first a consti- 
tution has been regarded as a most solemn and formal 
instrument, and its authors have often succeeded in embody- 
ing within it a piece of legislation, hoping in this way to 
make it perpetual. This proclivity has strengthened with 
the years, and our later constitutions have, in consequence, 
approached the length and character of legal codes. The 
civil maxims, or bill of rights, were a survival of centuries 
of experience in government in England and America. The 
Virginia bill, written by George Mason, may be taken as a 
type. The state was conceived as existing for the benefit 
of the individual. All its functions were to protect his 



1776-1787] CHECKS AND BALANCES 187 

interests and advance his happiness. No constitution of 
the period intimates that the state has rights which the 
individual must respect. 

The early instruments are thus in sharp contrast with 
those made a century later. In those of our day, the state 
is the public almoner, the friend of humanity, the protector 
of capital and labor. In these early constitutions, the 
primary doctrine is of natural rights. Public officials are 
the agents of the people. The right of revolution is inher- 
ent in society. In order to secure rights, the functions of 
government must be defined, and as the constitution of 
Massachusetts declared, so that one department shall not 
perform the duties of the other. Of course all this effort 
to divide civil affairs among responsible heads was but a 
process in democracy. It finds expression in the phrase 
of that day; securing "checks and balances" in govern- 
ment. It was a dominant idea of the time that the form 
of government could be so drawn up that the mechanical 
arrangement of terms, offices, elections, and grant of powers 
would save the individual and the state from injury. 

It must not be forgotten that democracy trusts much 
to laws, and less to men. So Massachusetts declared that 
its government should be "one of laws and not of men." 
Clearly, an underlying principle at the outset of our politi- 
cal affairs was that familiar principle in agency that powers 
and privileges not specified are not granted, and are assumed 
by the agent at his peril. This was Hamilton's idea of the 
national Constitution, that it was in the nature of a bill of 
rights,* declaring what might be done. The doctrine of 
implied powers is not heard of when a constitution is in 
process of formation ; it is a doctrine that comes into vigor- 
ous life when a political party essays to administer a gov- 
ernment under a constitution. And after all, it is the 
administration of a constitution that determines its mean- 
ing. It must not be forgotten that the origin, growth, and 
composition of the organic law cut a very unimportant figure 
in the practical affairs of government and politics. 

Expediency is the supreme law of the state, and what- 
ever the majority will suffer a political party to do is con- 

* Federalist, LXXXIV. 



iSS FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1770-1787 

stitutional, and remains constitutional unless reversed by 
another majority. At the time of the formation of our 
early constitutions, political parties were not organized. 
Measures found favor or met with opposition, but not that 
favor or that opposition which is now identified with the 
well-drilled forces of a political party. The bills of rights 
in civil affairs were viewed like maxims in mathematics. 
Doubtless this explains the presence of the doctrines of the 
civil compact, of natural rights, of revolution, of the right 
to trial by jury, of freedom of speech and of the press, and 
of exemption from searches and seizures which are found 
in all the declarations. 

But the doctrine of natural right was interpreted in a 
different manner than we might be led to expect. Church 
and state were united, in varying degree, as in Massachu- 
setts, where the Congregational communion prevailed, and 
in South Carolina, where the Episcopal was made the state 
church by the constitution of 1776. Unitarians, Jews, and 
Roman Catholics, and members of the Society of Friends, 
were not suffered to enjoy the privileges granted to the 
religiously qualified. New York was most tolerant of pri- 
vate opinion.* It seems at first astonishing, that in a group 
of commonwealths, each of which laid its civil foundations 
on the rights of man, only one, Vermont, applied the doc- 
trine to all men irrespective of race or color, and in its three 
constitutions, of 1777, 1786, and 1793, forbade slavery. 
This epoch-making provision was destined to become the 
precedent for clauses in the first constitution of Ohio, 1802, 
the first of Illinois, 1819, the second and third of New 
York, 182 1, 1846, in the free state constitutions, and in 
the Thirteenth Amendment, a part of the supreme law of 
the land after 1865. I have said that the Virginia bill 
of rights was a type. There was also another type, the 

* For an account of the action of the principal Lutheran and Calvin- 
istic clergymen of Philadelphia, in 1776, to have a clause inserted in the 
Pennsylvania constitution of that year recognizing religious toleration, 
see letter of Rev. Henry Melchoir Muhlenburg, reprinted in the Pennsyl- 
vania Magazine for April, iSq8, pp. 12Q-131. The petition is there given. 
It was incorporated in the forty-tifth section of the constitution. The 
petition was presented to the convention September 25, 1776; see its 
Proceedings, Harrisburg, 1825, p. 53. 



1776-1787] SOVEREIGNTY 189 

Massachusetts bill, and these suggest that from the begin- 
ning of our commonwealth history there have been two 
contiguous zones of civil life, a northern and a southern. 
If any one will read the declaration of rights adopted by 
states west and south of Virginia, and of states west of 
Massachusetts, he will discover a law of American political 
institutions, that Virginia leads him to a greater Virginia, 
and Massachusetts to a greater New England and New York. 

It is a characteristic of all written constitutions that 
have appeared among the Latin races, both in South 
America and on the continent,* to abound in definitions 
and administrative provisions. The first is due, doubtless, 
to the novelty of experiment; the second, to the familiarity 
of these races with administrative law. England and the 
American colonies had no administrative law, and it is still 
unknown to British and American jurisprudence. The 
early bills of rights were axiomatic statements of civil 
experience, but among them appear a few definitions, such 
as that of the civil compact, the right of revolution, and 
the nature of religion. But one looks in vain for a defi- 
nition of sovereignty, though it was formally claimed by 
New Hampshire, in its constitution of 1784; by Massachu- 
setts, in the constitution of 1780, and by Connecticut, in 
the act of assembly of 1776, by which the change from 
colony to state was authorized. No southern state in its 
constitution claimed sovereignty. But the notion of residu- 
ary sovereignty everywhere prevailed. 

The claim of Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and 
North Carolina to the exclusive regulation of their internal 
police was later interpreted as proof of state sovereignty. 
Not until the national Constitution was in process of for- 
mation, and later was before the people for ratification, did 
the ambiguous doctrine of sovereignty provoke party differ- 
ences. As an illustration of the effort of a convention to 
correct evils of long standing may be cited a clause in the 
Maryland bill of rights of 1776, forbidding judges to hold 
other offices during their terms of service and making them 
removable by the governor on recommendation of two- 

*The New York constitutional convention of 1894 published a vol- 
ume of " Foreign Constitutions," The Argus Company, Albany, printers. 



190 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776-1800 

thirds of each house. This evidently aimed to correct an 
abuse that had grown up in colonial times. So, too, the 
clauses in the bills of Maryland, 1776, Massachusetts, 1780, 
and New Hampshire, 1784, 1792, declaring that the stabil- 
ity of the commonwealth depends upon the independence 
of the judiciary, point to the same source of evil. 

The times were remedial as well as corrective. Reli- 
gious qualifications were made less harassing than in colo- 
nial days. The rigor of the common law was mitigated by 
providing in the bills of rights that the estates of suicides, 
traitors, and persons killed by accident should descend to 
the heirs at law, instead of becoming a forfeit to the king's 
successor, the state. Hereditary titles and emoluments and 
sinecures were forever forbidden. The leveling spirit had 
begun its work, and henceforth public dignities, honors, 
and offices should not exist solely for the benefit of the 
well-born. The shoemaker and the plowboy might now 
turn statesman, and to be father of a line of office-holders 
should rank a man with the son of a line of kings. The 
great fact now declared to the world was, opportunity for 
all men who were qualified to serve the state. Of course 
"qualified" meant according to the constitution, the laws, 
and the opinions of the voters. Delaware, in 1792, and 
Tennessee, in 1796, declared themselves suable at law, but 
Tennessee limited the right to its own citizens. 

It is to be observed that these constitutional provisions 
were made, the one two years before, the other two years 
after the great decision,* in correction of which the Eleventh 
Amendment was added to the Constitution of the United 
States, leaving the question of suability of a state wholly 
with the state itself. A perusal of the bills of rights of 
the eighteenth century discloses the fundamental idea of 
individualism that runs through the organic laws of the 
states. It was the expression of the revolt from monarchy, 
and the swing of the pendulum measured a larger arc than 
at any period since. With individualism went the doc- 
trines of natural rights, the social compact, and the right 
of revolution. Popular sovereignty, vaguely expressed, 
found a place in the list of political concepts. It was des- 

*2 Dallas, 419 (1793), Chisholm vs. Georgia. 



1776-1800] THE LEGISLATURE 191 

tined to an interpretation by political parties, but the 
Fathers do not seem to have made great account of it. 
Whatever may now be the opinion in which officials hold 
the declaration of rights in a constitution, the people of 
America in the eighteenth century may be said to have 
attached primary importance to the declarations of their 
time, as clearly appears in the struggle over the Alien and 
Sedition laws, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, and 
the Doctrines of 1798. 

Passing from the declarations of rights to the second 
part of the instruments, it is clear, at once, that the legis- 
lature, as the agent of the people, held first place in their 
thought. The legislators were in two groups, a lower and 
an upper house, the one a check and balance to the other. 
The brief continuance of a unicameral system in Pennsyl- 
vania* and Georgia, f and its abandonment by Vermont:}: 
early in the nineteenth century, soon eliminated that sys- 
tem as an important factor in our history. No great im- 
portance is to be attached to variations in legislative titles, 
though the early constitutions in continuing colonial names 
of legislatures, appear, for a time, to recognize essential 
differences in this respect. The tests of legislative worth 
are organization, powers, limitations, qualifications for can- 
didacy, terms, and successions. Of first importance is the 
basis of representation. Racially, this was exclusively 
white persons in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, and Kentucky. In practice, it existed in 
North Carolina and Tennessee. Though rural population 
outnumbered urban more than thirty to one, a struggle 
began from the first between the two sets of interests, 
which has continued with increased vigor to this day. It 

*The state of Pennsylvania had a legislature, consisting of the 
assembly and (for some purposes) a legislative body, the executive coun- 
cil, from 1776-1790. The defects of the one-chambered system are set 
forth by the Council of Censors. See Proceedings Relative to Calling 
the Conventions of 1776 and 1790, etc., Harrisburg, 1825. 

t Georgia had a legislature of one house, 1777-1789. 

{Vermont, from 1776-1836. The reports of the Vermont Council 
of Censors during this period clearly bring out the functions of two 
houses and the failure of the unicameral system. 



192 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [i 776-1800 

may be recorded, briefly, that the rural interest has always 
triumphed in the contests over determining the apportion- 
ment of representation in a state. In Massachusetts, New 
York, and Virginia there was a clear recognition of the 
double basis of persons and property. The lower house 
represented the persons, the upper house, the property 
in these states. 

Thus it came about that the senate represented large 
and civilly equal districts; the house represented towns. 
So great a diversity appears in practice it cannot be said 
that the county was as yet a civil unit. This was chiefly 
due to the inequality among the counties. In older parts 
of the states, counties were much smaller, more populous, 
and richer than in the newer parts, and as migration had 
already begun westward, new counties were rapidly organ- 
ized, and some of the older and more easterly ones divided. 
Gradually two units of apportionment were worked out: the 
town, or township, in the north; the county, in the south. 
But the basis was loose and left by the constitutions to the 
legislatures. These were usually limited in numbers, by a 
maximum and a minimum membership, a practice that has 
been continued to our time. But no legislature succeeded 
in solving the apportionment problem, and popular dissatis- 
faction with resolutions from time to time made accounts 
for the relatively large number of state constitutions during 
the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Judging by the 
letter of these instruments, the states seem to have been 
at first close corporations, for the qualifications to vote and 
to hold office cut down the number of possible candidates 
to a small part of the population. 

Though a person of color may have voted in North 
Carolina prior to 1835, in New Jersey before 1806, in Ten- 
nessee before 1834, or in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
and Vermont, only white men held office. In this respect, 
considering the mighty changes in the suff'rage made dur- 
ing the nineteenth century, America to-day, differs greatly 
from America a century ago. But to be of the white race 
was not enough. The candidate must be native-born, or 
an inhabitant when the constitution was adopted; he must 
have reached a prescribed age, have resided in the state, 



1776-1800] QUALIFICATIONS FOR OFFICE 193 

town, or parish for a specified time; must possess real estate 
of a fixed value, clear of incumbrance, and in nine of the 
sixteen states he must profess belief in a religious creed. 
While this limitation of candidacy seems to us arbitrary and 
undemocratic, it must be remembered that every age sets 
tests and standards by which to measure human worth ; and 
property and religious qualifications seemed, in the eight- 
eenth century, the most convenient and satisfactory that 
could be established. The strangeness that these tests 
should be inserted in the constitutions disappears when we 
reflect that these at any time are only a transcription of 
current thought. However, there was opposition to the 
religious tests, and in Pennsylvania, where a mild religious 
qualification was exacted, Franklin succeeded in having it 
limited to members of assembly, who were few in number, 
and prevented its extension to the voters.* It will doubt- 
less occur to the mind, that to-day there are districts in 
the United States in which a Roman Catholic, or a Jew, 
or a Unitarian, or an agnostic, not to say a Mohammedan 
or a Buddhist, could not be elected to ofifice. Doubtless the 
explanation now will also apply to our ancestors over a 
century ago. 

The qualifications for a member of the state senate 
were more exacting than those for a member of the house. 
He must be older, must possess more property, and in some 
states have maintained a longer residence. f The reason 
for this is to be found in the popular concept of the senate. 
It stood for property. The house stood for persons. 
Moreover, the senate was a sudden creation to meet a 
demand of a new political system. It was created as a sort 
of anchor to the house; a conservative body that should 
save the state from being stampeded by excitable young 
delegates who might, and probably would be, elected to the 
house. Tennessee, in 1796, began a new chapter of con- 
stitutional history by empowering either house to originate 

* For an explanation of Franklin's disapproval of religious tests in a 
constitution, see his letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780. Works 
(Bigelow's Ed.), VII, p. 140. Ford's, The Many-Sided Franklin. 

tFor the qualifications of representatives, senators, governors and 
electors, consult the constitutions, or the comparative tables in my 
Constitutional History of the American People, Vol. 1, Chapter III. 



194 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [i 776-1800 

a money bill, an innovation that ceased to excite appre- 
hension at least fifty years ago. It was the entering wedge 
which threatens to split off the senate entirely from our 
civil system, and reduce our state legislature to one cham- 
ber, if it does not in fact prove ultimately an obliteration 
of the upper house. The change may, in substance, wipe 
out the traditional differences in their most important func- 
tions. 

The manner of choosing senators was directly by the 
voters, except in Maryland and Kentucky, which instituted 
an electoral college, that of Maryland before, that of Ken- 
tucky after the adoption of the national Constitution. 
Undoubtedly, the House of Lords was in the minds of the 
framers when the state senates were planned. By requir- 
ing greater age, larger amounts of property, longer resi- 
dence, and by fixing a longer term than was prescribed for 
members of the house, the framers sought to secure that 
stability which they associated with the English body. As 
a landed estate could not be established in America, they 
devised these substitutes, and seem calmly to have antici- 
pated that a conserving power had thus been secured in the 
state. But before the century closed a revolt, led by Jef- 
ferson, against religious and property qualifications was on 
foot, and he lived to see most of these impediments to 
democracy swept away. It must be said, however, that 
the state senate was not an accidental discovery, nor an 
unreasonable device. The colonial councils, chiefly the 
creation of the colonial executives, prepared the way for 
it, and the necessity of providing "checks and balances" 
in legislation hastened the organization of a so evidently 
useful body. The legislature was given its grant of power 
in general terms, with slight if any suggestion of limitation 
in any direction. The only limits were expressed or implied 
in the bills of rights. That large body of provisions in a 
modern state constitution, forbidding special legislation, 
was not to be inserted in the organic laws until after the 
panic of 1837. By that time a half-century of experience 
had taught the people that their agents in the legislature 
could not be absolutely trusted "for wisdom and virtue," 
and that there are many things which law-makers should 



1776-1800J THE EXECUTIVE 195 

not be permitted to do. The principal duty of the houses, 
as portrayed by the early instruments, is to tax, to pay 
salaries, to maintain an adequate police force in the state, 
and to adjourn. The industrial life which makes the state 
an identured servant had not yet begun. The common- 
wealth was not yet conceived as primarily a source of profit 
to individuals or to private corporations. Its chief reason 
for existence was to enable the Americans to enjoy the 
rights of man. This simple, not to say primitive, notion 
of civil life and the purpose of government runs through the 
early constitutions, and doubtless goes far to explain the 
laudation of the days of the Fathers which is often heard. 

It must be remembered that America was agricultural 
during the eighteenth century. Population was not yet 
great enough to tread on the heels of subsistence, and the 
costly and often burdensome habits of modern life were 
unknown. One searches in vain for provisions for popular 
education, for charitable and reformatory institutions, and 
for those merciful and costly establishments in which the 
unfortunate and the criminal classes are cared for. The 
state was not conceived to be a copartnership in private 
enterprise, or a social concern, or an employer, or a father 
of the house. It was an organization under contract to 
keep the peace so that every individual might enjoy "life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." There is no evi- 
dence that these words were any less vague in meaning than 
they are to-day. The important fact remains that the 
eighteenth-century state legislature was put in possession 
of a pretty free grant of authority. Annual elections of 
the representatives, and annual or biennial elections of the 
senators, it was supposed, would keep the state in order. 

But the grant of executive power was a confession of 
distrust. Colonial governors had not won public confi- 
dence. They had strained at their official bonds, and at 
times had broken them. The state should not run the risk 
of executive usurpation. Short terms, limited authority, 
and inability for the governor to succeed himself, or to 
serve more than "two years in four," or "nine years in 
twelve," and the popular test by annual elections, such 
as prevailed in New England, were supposed to defend the 



196 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [i 776-1800 

people from many abuses. Candidacy for the governorship 
was hedged about by longer residence and higher property 
qualifications than those prescribed for senators. The 
popular notion of a governor was as a military man. He 
commanded the army and navy of the state; he repelled 
invasions and suppressed insurrections. His civil duties 
were few. Every state constitution did not authorize him 
to veto a bill or pardon an offender. His appointments 
were chiefly military and judicial. His was to execute, not 
to make laws. All things considered, the eighteenth-cen- 
tury governor was a military figurehead, rather than a civil 
officer possessing great authority. He was second to the 
legislature in public estimation, and not, as in our day, the 
last hope of a suffering public against legislative waste and 
unwisdom. Provision was made for the succession in case 
of vacancy in the executive office. The lieutenant-gov- 
ernor, or the president of the senate, succeeded to the office, 
though a more cumbrous provision existed in some states. 
Testing the executive functions by present standards, it 
may be said the early governors were less important ele- 
ments in the state then than now. 

The courts followed the English judicial system closely, 
as it was adapted to the demand for local and state service. 
At the outset it must be confessed that the judiciary, 
though of the three departments of government the least 
changed by the Revolution, is the most difficult to reduce 
to system and to describe. Reforms were numerous, and 
chief of these was the gradual elimination of the legislature 
from its colonial place as a court of appeals. So various 
were the possible writs in colonial times, a case might go 
"from a justice of the peace to the General Sessions, 
thence to the Common Pleas, thence to the Supreme Court, 
and thence to the legislature, to be by that body sent back 
to the Supreme Court for final decision, with the further 
chance for a new trial on a writ of review."* This liability 
to protracted litigation had proved a serious fact in New 
Hampshire, and the evil was not unknown in other states. 

♦See Albert Stillman Batchellor's chapter on "The Development of 
the Courts of New Hampshire, from the Termination of the rrovince 
Government in 1775." 



1776-1800] THE JUDICIARY 197 

The separation of legislative and judicial functions was 
therefore one of the great reforms of the time. Another, 
was the definition of judicial terms, the creation of district 
courts with specified jurisdictions, and the gradual develop- 
ment of a system of appeals so as to bring litigation to as 
speedy a termination as possible. But the common law, 
with its elaborate and highly technical forms, made legal 
practice much of a mystery, and cost, plaintiff and defend- 
ant much time and money. It was a step toward simpli- 
city to arrange a system of inferior and superior courts in the 
state; to prepare the way for the gradual abolition of the 
nisi prius system; to define, at least in an elementary way, 
the jurisdiction of the courts in civil and criminal matters, 
and to make clearer the law and the equity powers of differ- 
ent grades of courts. The first constitution of Maryland 
contains the most elaborate article of any of the constitu- 
tions on the judiciary, and doubtless it discloses with toler- 
able completeness the practice at law as well as the judicial 
system of the state. The judges usually owed their office 
to executive appointment, for election by the legislature 
was a reform first secured in the first constitution of Ohio, 
in 1803, and popular elections were not instituted until 
after 1840. The governor also appointed justices of the 
peace, and in some states, the district attorneys. Thus the 
whole machinery of the judicial department was removed 
from popular control. But all executive nominations had 
to be approved by the senate, and thus a check on the gov- 
ernor was secured. 

Testing these early constitutions by those made during 
the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the judicial pro- 
visions are vague, elementary, and indicative of a system 
in its rudimentary stages.* It may be said that no depart- 
ment of the public business has been more exhaustively 
discussed in constitutional conventions than the judiciary. 
The lawyers seem never to get it right. Its discussion may 
be read, with opportunity for great insight into the growth 
of our institutions, in the debates of some of the constitu- 
tional conventions, notably, that of Kentucky, in 1849; ^^ 
Louisiana, in 1864; of New York, in 1868; of Pennsyl- 

* See Chapter XV. 



198 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776-1800 

vania, in 1873, and of California, in 1879. -^^ there is no 
record of debates in the state conventions from 1776 to 
1820, we do not know what conditions prevailed during 
these early years, and with what intent the various provis- 
ions respecting the judiciary were inserted in the constitu- 
tions. 

In reading the eighteenth-century instruments, includ- 
ing the Constitution of the United States, it is well to 
remember that a court of law always possesses undefined 
and undefinable discretionary powers; that a judicial sys- 
tem must be largely a matter of practice, and that only 
general outlines of its character can be given in the consti- 
tution, or even in the laws. It is in the successive judiciary 
acts, in the rules of court, and in the actual history of cases 
that there can be found the working judicial system of a 
commonwealth. The eighteenth century was an age of 
litigation, as witness the large number of successful lawyers 
in proportion to the population. This outburst of legal 
cases, such as usually follow a civil revolution, was the 
training-school of men who at a later day aided in perfect- 
ing the judicial systems still in vogue in the country. It 
may be recorded as a most important matter that out of 
this mass of legal dispute there evolved judicial reforms 
which, taking hold early in the nineteenth century, abolished 
many of the cumbersome methods of the old common-law 
procedure, the real actions, and the bills in chancery, and 
at last worked out a judicial system, in every state, by which 
suitors have "justice freely, without being obliged to pur- 
chase it; completely, without denial, and promptly, without 
delay." 

In our day, a state government abounds in administra- 
tive offices. In the eighteenth century, every fifth man 
you met had not served the township, the city, the county 
or the state in an official capacity. The Revolution did not 
change American local government. Chief of administra- 
tive officers then as now was the sheriff, and it may be said 
that then as now the body of sheriffs in the country were 
representative men. This important officer was elected by 
the people, and could not succeed himself in office, until 
one term at least had intervened. Respecting other local 



1 776-1800] THE SUFFRAGE 199 

officers, save coroners and justices of the peace, the consti- 
tutions were silent ; but legislation provided for assessors, 
collectors, treasurers, land officers, selectmen, aldermen, 
mayors, and councilmen. 

The sparsity of population and the absence of large 
towns eliminated the problem of city government, therefore 
this chief civil problem of our day did not vex the Fathers. 
When we know that not until Michigan, in 1850, introduced 
an article on local government in its constitution was the 
subject hinted at in the organic law of a state, it is easier 
to understand the silence of the eighteenth-century consti- 
tutions on a subject which now is of first importance. 
Doubtless the explanation of the silence is found in the 
character and distribution of the population down to 1800, 
and indeed till 1830. An agricultural people would not 
require the elaboration of local government in an article in 
the fundamental law. In our day, the phrase "social effi- 
ciency" is a description of economic conditions. Where 
life is simple, agricultural, and filled with labor, elaborate 
laws or constitutional provisions regulating local govern- 
ment will not be found. 

Perhaps no test that can be applied to these early gov- 
ernments is more searching than the conditions of voting, 
fixed by the qualifications for the suffrage. The terms 
"the people," "popular elections," are freely but vaguely 
used in our history. Public opinion is often distinguishable 
from the opinion of the voters. Throughout the period 
now under examination the number of voters was relatively 
small. The elimination of persons of color from exercising 
the suffrage cut out about one-fifth of the males. Prop- 
erty requirements eliminated white men in most of the 
states. Women who owned real estate voted in New Jer- 
sey from 1776 until the disabling act of November 16, 
1807, when the term "inhabitants" in the constitution was 
defined to mean "white men having a freehold estate 
worth fifty pounds." Of the effect of property and reli- 
gious qualifications in cutting down the number of voters, 
we have no accurate record. 

As late as 1830, in Virginia, there were eighty thou- 
sand white men of age who were barred from voting by 



200 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [1776 1800 

their poverty.* The active thought of the times could 
not trust the landless man with a vote or an office. Thus 
real estate was the basis of republican government in 
America. The first discussion of this startling fact that 
comes down to us was in the Massachusetts convention of 
1820. The venerable John Adams, the learned Story, the 
profound Webster, the thoughtful Lincoln, then discussed 
at length "the true basis of government." Lincoln de- 
clared for persons; Adams, Story, and Webster for prop- 
erty. The speech which Webster then delivered he repeated 
a week later, as the Plymouth Oration, and it remains to 
this day the best presentation of the eighteenth-century 
ideas of the basis of government. 

Testing the constitutions by the extent of the suffrage 
which they permitted, government in America in its early 
form, as the Fathers gave it to the world, seems a plutocracy 
rather than a representative democracy. But we must not 
forget that we live in a different age, when, politically, as 
Franklin puts it, "the whole of one man is as dear to him 
as the whole of another." No evidence reaches us that 
any of the Fathers looked forward to universal suffrage as 
the destiny of the American people. Those who lacked 
the requisite religious belief, or amount of property, were 
considered as we now consider children, as having civil 
rights, but as being represented by others. The counter- 
revolution through which the country passed with the com- 
ing of Andrew Jackson into the presidency finds one of its 
chief causes in the limited suffrage which prevailed till about 
1825. As most of the earlier constitutions were promul- 
gated by the conventions that framed them, the voters had 
no opportunity to record their opinions regarding them. 
Not until democracy was strong enough to insist upon the 
submission of such documents to popular vote, did property 
and religious qualifications for the voter disappear. 

When we examine any civil structure of the past, it 
seems to be only a phrase or a transition to something that 
has followed. So these early organic acts seem but a pre- 
amble to the present political institutions of our country. 

*For their petition to the Virginia convention and its discussion, see 
the Debates, 1829-30. 



1776-1800J ADMINISTRATION 201 

But we must not forget that they were most important ele- 
ments in the lives of millions of men and women, and 
possessed for them more than a merely historical interest. 
Legislatures levied taxes and disbursed appropriations. 
Courts handed down decisions, governors executed laws, 
and the machinery of the public business ran on, with seri- 
ous effect on the lives of millions and the destiny of the 
nation. Whatever defects we think we detect in these 
fundamental laws, we know that they were made and admin- 
istered by some of our foremost statesmen, and that the 
people advanced under them to greater prosperity. One 
is led to the conclusion that there is more to a state than 
its constitutions and its laws. This superior part is, after 
all, the men and women who, in spite of defective public 
statutes, constitutional limitations, confines, and denial 
of rights, of which, nevertheless, a people may boast as 
evidence of progress, steadily attending to their various 
duties, prepare the way for the larger opportunities of a 
more liberal age. 

However defective the first state governments formed, 
when tried by the tests of our later republican organization, 
their defects were far less serious than those of the league 
of states which, under the name of the Confederation, was 
the first attempt of the American people to form a national 
union. Let us now turn our attention to the Confeder- 
ation. 

Note. — New State Constitutions. — The states have framed constitu- 
tions as follows (the states are named in the order in which they came 
into the Union): 

1. Delaware, 1776, 1792, 1831, 1897. 

2. Pennsylvania, 1776, 1790, 1838, 1873. 

3. New Jersey, 1776, 1844. 

4. Georgia, 1777, 1789, 1798, 1839, 1868, 1877. 

5. Connecticut, Charter of 1662, Constitution of 1812. 

6. Massachusetts, 1780. 

7. Maryland, 1776, 1851, 1864, 1867. 

8. South Carolina, 1776, 1778, 1790, 1868, 1895. 

9. New Hampshire, 1776, 1784, 1792, 1876. 

10. Virginia, 1776, 1830, 1850, 1870. 

11. New York, 1777, 1821, 1846. 

12. North Carolina, 1776, 1868, 1876. 

13. Rhode Island, Charter of 1663, Constitution of 1842. 

14. Vermont, admitted March 4, 1791. Free. Constitutions, 1776, 

1786, 1793. 



202 FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC [i 776-1900 

15. Kentucky, admitted June i, 1792. Skive. Constitutions, 1792, 

1799, 1*^50, 1891. 

16. Tennessee, June i, 1796. Slave. 1834,. 1865, 1870. 

17. Ohio, November 29, 1802. Free. 1851. 

18. Louisiana, April 30, 1812. Slave. 1845, 1852, 1868, 1879, 1898. 

19. Indiana, December II, 1816. Free. 1851. 

20. Mississippi, Decemlier 10, 1817. Slave. 1832, 1868, 1890. 

21. Illinois, December 3, 1818. Free. 1848, 1870. 

22. Alabama, December 14, 1819. Slave. 1867, 1875. 

23. Maine, March 15, 1820. Free. 

24. Missouri, August 10, 1821. Slave. 1865, 1875. 

25. Arkansas, June 15, 1836. Slave. 1868, 1874. 

26. Michigan, January 2^^, 1837. Free. 1850. 

27. Florida, March 3, 1845. Slave, 1865, 1868, 1886. 

28. Texas, December 29, 1845. Slave. 1866, 1868, 1876. 

29. Iowa, December 28, 1846. Free. 1857. 

30. Wisconsin, May 29, 1848. Free. 

31. California, September 9, 1850. Free. 1879. 

32. Minnesota, May 11, 1858. Free. 

33. Oregon, February 14, 1859. Free. 

34. Kansas, January 29, 1861. Free. (Slave constitution, 1855; free 

constitution in 1857; slave constitution in 1858, a free con- 
stitution in 1859, on which the state was admitted.) 

35. West Virginia, June ig, 1863. Free. 1872. 

36. Nevada, October 31, 1864. Free. 

37. Nebraska, March i, 1867, 1875. 

38. Colorado, August i, 1876. 

39. North Dakota, November 2, 1889. 

40. South Dakota, November 2, 1889. 

41. Montana, November 8, 1889. 

42. Washington, November 11, 1889. 

43. Idaho, July 3, 1890. 

44. Wyoming, July 10, i8go. 

45. Utah, January 4, 1896. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

1776-1783 

The Declaration of Independence was not hastily issued. 
For two years the colonies had been protesting and petition- 
ing, and for over a year war had been raging, yet all this 
time the people were thoroughly loyal. Their thirteen gov- 
ernments were not oppressive. A stubborn, foolish king 
and an equally stubborn and short-sighted ministry per- 
sisted in a policy of taxation, which the colonies with equal 
stubbornness resisted. Had the English government quietly 
abandoned its policy and let the assemblies levy the tax, 
there would have been no war for independence at this time. 
It cannot be too well understood that the folly of England 
was the fundamental cause of the war. Her folly was 
industrial as well as political. Her trade laws were narrow 
in spirit and ruinous in their effects. The Continental Con- 
gress seems to hesitate, and to be reluctant to go to war. 
No body of Americans plotted independence. There was 
no conspiracy to overthrow the old government and to set 
up a new one. Congress acted chiefly from outside pres- 
sure, and that was England and the English. 

It may be well to remember that time has justified the 
Americans in their revolt against the English government, 
as has been demonstrated by that government's later colo- 
nial policy. The American colonies were the last, and 
indeed the only ones England lost. She entirely revised 
her colonial policy after the American Revolution. By 
adherence to the liberal principles at that time forced upon 
her notice, she has extended her empire and benefited man- 
kind. Canada is an example of her colonial wisdom. So 
it may be said that the American Revolution did as much 
for the British Empire as for the American Republic. 

As soon as hostilities broke out, and Americans were 

303 



204 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDEiNCE (1776 

dead or dying for the support of their principles, tlie idea 
of independence rapidly took hold of the people. In hun- 
dreds of town-meetings along the seaboard, in gatherings 
on the frontier, resolutions for independence were passed, 
so that Jefferson had his work well done before he began. 
The Declaration of Independence contains the substance of 
dozens of little declarations adopted all over the country. 
When Richard Henry Lee's resolution was carried, July 2, 
1776, the colonial period came to an end. The Declaration 
of the 4th of July was issued out of "a decent respect to 
the opinions of mankind," and gave the causes which 
impelled separation. On that day the people of the United 
Colonies became a new nation, "conceived in liberty, and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." 

America then had no large cities. Philadelphia, the 
largest, did not have thirty thousand souls. It was a rural 
people whom King George proclaimed "rebels." The 
conquest of such a people is always difficult, because there 
are no great centers at which to strike. Moreover, 
America was much of a wilderness. The English and 
German troops were accustomed to the smooth roads of 
Europe. America lacked roads. The English policy was, 
therefore, to get control of the seaport towns, and the 
great bays and rivers. By holding these, the British might 
raid the country at leisure. If the Hudson were held. 
New England would be cut off from the center and south. 
The Americans had no fleet; the English fleet was the most 
powerful in the world. By holding the Delaware, Chesa- 
peake Bay, Charleston Bay, and the Savannah River, the 
British might conquer the country piecemeal. 

The Americans were familiar with the lay of the land. 
Their policy was to avoid open battle and sieges, but to 
strike quick blows, to cut off supplies, constantly to invest 
the enemy and to wear him out. They were on the defen- 
sive. Any true account of the equipment of the two forces 
brings out strange contrasts. The English were trained 
soldiers, equipped with the best weapons of the day, and 
were fully supplied with food, clothing, medicines, and 
ammunition. But England at this time had no first-class 
officers in her army. When the Declaration of Indepen- 



1776] THE CONTESTANTS 205 

dence was read in England, doubtless Arthur Wellesley, a 
boy nine years old, heard of it; but England, in 1776, had 
then no great soldier like this "Iron Duive" of the next 
century. The English officers who were sent to America 
were of the Braddock type; and some had seen much of 
camp life, but most of them, like Burgoyne, had seen more 
of club life. They knew little of American geography, and 
less of the Americans, whom they despised as rebellious 
peasants and colonial politicians and conspirators. The 
English troops were a fine military machine, which their 
officers did not know how to operate, at least in America. 

The American soldiers, or continentals, as they are often 
familiarly called, were farmers, mechanics, counting-house 
clerks, frontiersmen, a few negroes, and a sprinkling of men 
from those whom John Adams, and many since his day, 
called the "well-born." Hardly two of them had the same 
equipment. They were unaccustomed to discipline; and 
the spirit of personal independence was strong, and made 
discipline difficult. Jealousy and petty rivalries between 
different colonial regiments, a host of independent com- 
panies, frequent desertions, occasional mutinies, short 
enlistments, and the temptations of home ties, made the 
American troops a motley company at best. But they 
were fighting for themselves and their homes; they were 
unusually good marksmen, and capable of enduring great 
fatigue. In every way they were a contrast to their oppo- 
nents. 

Even greater was the contrast between the English and 
the American officers. Washington combined the states- 
man and the soldier. He was in the prime of life, being 
forty-three when he took command. His training had 
been on his plantation, which, managed by himself, was one 
of the best in the country. In the French war he had 
borne a conspicuous part; in the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses he was known for his practical good sense, and in 
Congress, where he was amidst the most brilliant men in 
the country, he was admired for his sagacity. He was one 
of the wealthiest, and also one of the best informed, men in 
America. He was methodical, cautious, and full of reserve 
power. Within nine months of his appointment as com- 



2o6 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1776 

mandcr-in-chief, he had compelled Lord Howe to evacuate 
Boston, and had done this with raw militia and British can- 
non captured at Ticonderoga. No man of his type could 
be found in the British army. 

The other American officers varied from him in degree 
rather than in kind. They were not professional soldiers. 
A few, like Stark, Putnam, and Allen, had seen service in 
the last French war; a few had figured in the militia, but 
most of them were just what the English called them, 
"plowboys. " As the war went on, the qualities of the 
"plowboys" were fully displayed, as we shall see. 

The English army was well drilled, but badly officered, 
was three thousand miles from its base of supplies, and was 
on the offensive. 

The continentals lacked discipline, but were well offi- 
cered, were near their base of supplies, and were on the 
defensive. 

On the morning when the Declaration was read to the 
army at New York, Congress had no delegated authority 
to levy a tax, to buy a gun, to equip a regiment, to build a 
ship, or to carry on the war. No body had empowered it 
to make treaties, to borrow money, or to contract alliances. 
Yet it proceeded promptly to do these very things. If 
Washington was successful in beating back the British, 
Congress would have little difficulty in governing the coun- 
try. But if reverses came; if the assemblies refused to 
co-operate, and the people to furnish men, money, and 
supplies; if factions broke out in the army, in Congress, 
and in the states, then the hope of the country was Wash- 
ington. Events soon proved his influence with the people, 
and of what stuff he was made. 

While the Declaration was on its passage, British troops 
were landing near New York City, and by the end of 
August, Howe had thirty thousand men there. He pressed 
the American detachment at Brooklyn so closely as to 
threaten to crush it. Washington, taking advantage of a 
dark and foggy night, safely transported his army from 
Brooklyn Heights to New York. The advance of the 
British fleet up the Hudson River made Washington's 
position unsafe, and he retreated northward. Howe drove 



17 76] TRENTON 207 

him up the Hudson Valley, attacked and defeated the 
Americans intrenched at White Plains, and carried Fort 
Washington by assault. Fort Lee, on the New Jersey shore 
of the river, was abandoned to the British. The conti- 
nentals now began returning home in large numbers, as 
their time had expired. Washington seemed likely to be 
left without an army. The next center of British attack 
was obviously Philadelphia. Washington left his tents and 
his camp-fires burning and started for New Jersey. General 
Charles Lee, who insisted on having an independent com- 
mand, was left in charge of the forces east of the Hudson, 
and was ordered to join Washington at Hackensack. This 
would have brought together an army of fourteen thousand 
to confront Howe. Lee refused to obey. Washington 
could only retreat through New Jersey, with Cornwallis at 
his heels. He crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania. 
Meanwhile, Cornwallis extended the British lines from 
Burlington to above Trenton. 

Believing that Washington would soon be ruined, Lee 
marched to Morristown. Soon after his arrival he was cap- 
tured, in gown and slippers, by some British dragoons at an 
inn outside his lines. He was taken to New York and con- 
fined, but it is now known that he turned traitor and gave 
Howe information that would help destroy Washington and 
his army. His capture left John Sullivan in command, 
who joined Washington. 

On Christmas night, in a blinding snowstorm, with two 
thousand five hundred picked men, Washington surprised 
the British center at Trenton, broke the line, captured a 
thousand Hessians, and was back in Pennsylvania, ten miles 
away, before Cornwallis knew what had happened. The 
news of the retreat through New Jersey and of the coming 
of the British had started a panic in the Delaware Valley. 
Congress fled to Baltimore. Scores of people protested 
that they had always been for the king. The capture of 
the Hessians turned the tide. Philadelphia insisted on 
seeing the Hessians, that it might believe the victory. So 
Washington had them marched, as prisoners of war, down 
High, now Market, Street. He encamped his troops at 
Trenton, December 30th. Men and supplies began to 



2o8 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1777 

pour in, and the cause looked brighter. Even the New 
England troops re-enlisted for six weeks, 

Cornwallis was astonished. He thought the war was 
over, and had sent some of his baggage on board a ship to 
carry him to England. The rebels should not steal his 
Hessians in this fashion. So he marched from New Bruns- 
wick to Trenton with eight thousand men. Washington was 
thus placed in a critical position, being between the British 
army and the Delaware. Then Washington, the soldier, 
acted. During the night of January 2, 1777, he marched 
around the flank of the British army, routed the regiments 
forming its rear at Princeton, and passed on to Morristown 
Heights, where he went into winter quarters. This brilliant 
maneuver hinted to Cornwallis that he might need his bag- 
gage. There might be soldiers among the "plowboys." 

There were other observers than Americans and Eng- 
lishmen. A number of young and gallant Frenchmen who 
loved the cause of liberty had been meditating an offer of 
their services to Congress. The Marquis de Lafayette now 
fitted out a ship with military supplies and offered it and 
his services. 

At Morristown Washington spent the winter in improv- 
ing the organization of the army. Supplies from France 
were received, with the knowledge of the French govern- 
ment. Public enthusiasm in the states began to cool. 
Congress was slow to adopt a wise military policy. It 
divided the public business among many committees; it 
neglected to concentrate the resources of the country and 
began to demonstrate its incapacity to govern. Most of 
the older and experienced members of the Congress that 
issued the Declaration were now governors of states or 
members of assembly. Franklin had been sent as Minister 
to France; John Adams, as Minister to Holland. The 
little men were getting into Congress. Many of them 
were jealous of Washington, or had petty policies of their 
own. 

But Washington worked on. Summer found him with 
seven thousand troops, but he could not discover Howe's 
plans. He marched into New York, and Howe seemed to 
give no thought to him. On July 23d, it was known that 



1777] VALLEY FORGE 209 

Howe had set sail southward. This meant an attack on 
Philadelphia. Washington moved quickly into Pennsyl- 
vania. At the Neshaminy, he was joined by Lafayette 
and De Kalb. News reached him that Howe had left the 
Delaware and was coming up Chesapeake Bay. He at 
once marched to Wilmington, Delaware, to check his 
advance. On the 25th of August, Howe landed, and the 
two armies met on the nth of September at Chadd's 
Ford, on the Brandywine. A short battle followed. 

Washington was defeated and retreated through Chester 
and Philadelphia. The English advanced up the Schuylkill 
Valley. Washington was on the east bank of the Schuyl- 
kill. Howe suddenly turned back, and on September 26 
entered Philadelphia. Washington, on the 4th of October, 
made an unsuccessful attack on the British outposts at 
Germantown. He then retired to Valley Forge for the 
winter. The amy suffered terribly for lack of food, cloth- 
ing, and medicine. But Washington's position was a strong 
one by nature, and made stronger by fortifications. More- 
over, he could watch Howe. Congress was at York, 
whither it had fled from Lancaster, after a brief sojourn in 
Baltimore. 

In 1777, the British planned the conquest of New York 
and the permanent separation of New England from the 
other states. Two armies were to invade the state from 
Canada, and be met at Albany by a third from New York 
City. General John Burgoyne came down by way of Lake 
Champlain, captured Fort Ticonderoga, July 5, and three 
weeks later reached Fort Edward. General Schuyler had 
greatly delayed Burgoyne by obstructing his march with 
fallen timber. At Bennington, Vermont, the Green Moun- 
tain Boys had a quantity of supplies, which Burgoyne sent 
about one thousand of his German troops to capture. 
Instead of securing the supplies, the Germans suddenly 
found themselves surrounded and captured by the Green 
Mountain Boys under Colonel John Stark, on the i6th of 
August. Only seventy escaped. 

Encouraged by this success, the Vermont men, now 
well supplied with weapons and ammunition, took position 
north of Burgoyne's army, thus cutting him off from his 



2IO THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1777 

base of supplies. Just thirteen days before the battle of 
Bennington, the Americans were besieged in Fort Stanwix 
by Colonel Barry St. Lcgcr, who was in command of the 
second army, invading New York from Canada, having 
ascended the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, landing at 
Oswego, and thence pushing on down the Mohawk Valley. 
For three days the siege went on, when on the 6th of 
August the garrison made a sortie, swept over St. Leger's 
camp, captured five British flags, and in triumph hoisted 
them upside down over the ramparts. Congress, in June, 
had adopted the "Stars and Stripes," and now the garrison 
hoisted them above the inverted British flags. This was 
the first unfurling of our national flag; and it was hastily 
and clumsily made out of some red flannel, a white shirt, 
and a blue jacket. 

While the garrison of Fort Stanwix was routing St. 
Leger, a terrible fight was raging in a ravine near Oriskany, 
where Joseph Brant and his Mohawks had entrapped in 
ambush General Nicholas Herkimer and eight hundred 
militia on the way to raise the siege of the fort. This was 
the fiercest fight of the whole war. Herkimer was fatally 
wounded, but Brant's Mohawks were too crippled to 
advance. General Schuyler now sent Benedict Arnold to 
relieve the fort. Arnold caused a panic in St. Leger's 
camp by spreading a rumor that Burgoyne had been terribly 
defeated. On the 22d, St. Leger hastily retreated to Lake 
Ontario. Burgoyne was thus deprived of his aid, and also 
of that of the Mohawks. 

Meanwhile, Burgoyne was daily getting into worse straits. 
The Americans were on every side. The British army was 
entangled in the wilderness. Howe and his army were yet 
at sea; no help could be expected from New York City. 
Stubbornly Burgoyne moved on, defeated at Bemis Heights 
on the 19th of September, and again at Stillwater, Octo- 
ber 7. Retreating to Saratoga, he found himself surrounded 
and outgeneraled by Schuyler. In the midst of these 
operations Congress displaced Schuyler and put General 
Horatio Gates in command. But Burgoyne's fate was 
already settled. Schuyler's comprehensive plans, and 
Arnold at Bemis Heights, had forced Burgoyne into a hope- 



1777] BURGOYNE 2H 

less position. He was cut off from Canada and from New 
York City. Howe, ignorant of Burgoyne's movements, 
was busily engaged in taking Philadelphia. He could give 
Burgoyne no assistance. 

On the 17th of October, 1777, Burgoyne surrendered 
his army of six thousand men to General Gates. This sur- 
render was one of the great events in history. Saratoga is 
one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world. Several 
important consequences followed. 

France decided to recognize the independence of the 
United States and to form an alliance. By a treaty signed 
by Louis XVI. and Dr. Franklin, February 6, 1778, it was 
agreed that the war should continue till England acknowl- 
edged our independence. 

Public sentiment in England was changed. The king 
and Parliament and the ministry were willing to grant 
the Americans anything except independence. 

The British plan of war in America suddenly failed. 
The country was not cut in twain, but more firmly united 
than ever. This was an immediate result. The French 
alliance raised the spirits of the Americans and stimulated 
them to renewed exertions. Ultimately Spain and Holland 
aided us, and declared war against England. In each 
instance, it was not love for us but hostility to England 
that won us foreign aid. But the recognition of American 
independence by France was evidence to most Americans 
that continental Europe considered Burgoyne's surrender 
the beginning of the end. 

The winter of 1777-78 set in early, continued late, and 
was one of the most severe on record. The camp at Valley 
Forge was a scene of constant suffering. Though in the 
midst of a rich farming country, the American army suf- 
fered for all kinds of supplies. At Philadelphia, scarcely 
twenty-five miles away, the British had an abundance. The 
crops in 1777 were plentiful all over the country. Why, then, 
did Washington's army suffer? These were the reasons: 

Congress mismanaged the commissary department. It 
was in charge of a commission. Supplies that ought to 
have gone to the army at Valley Forge enriched politicians 
and speculators. 



212 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [177S 

The farmers preferretl to sell to the British army for 
gold, ratiier than to the American army for "continental" 
paper currency, whose value was constantly and rapidly 
decreasing. Our finances were badly managed, and the 
poor sokliers at Valley r\)rge had to suffer in consequence. 

The means of transportation were bad. Many of the 
states collected the taxes in kind; that is, flour, grain, cat- 
tle, pork, and salt; and the cost of transporting these sup- 
plies in winter-time was usually much greater than the value 
of the produce collected. 

So tlu^ suffering at Valley Forge must be attributed not 
to the apathy of the farmers or to the discouragement of 
the people, but to the bad management of the public affairs. 
Amidst these dark days, several members of Congress and 
some officers of the army plotted to put Gates in Washing- 
ton's place. The consi)iracy known as the "Conwa}- 
cabal," from one of the officers engaged in it, needed only 
to be breathed aloud to thinking men in order to come to 
naught, liut it made the Valley Forge winter darker and 
drearier. The T^'ench treaty was drawn in February, 1778. 
Baron Steuben, a distinguished Prussian soldier, came in 
the spring, and began drilling the army by the most approved 
rules of war. The "cabal" brought only disgrace upon its 
supporters. It left Washington stronger than ever with 
the people. Supplies began to arrive from France, and a 
French fleet was daily expected. 

Sir Henry Clinton had succeeded Lord Howe in com- 
mand of the British army, l^urgoyne's surrender left most 
of New York State in the iiantls of the Americans. Might 
they not regain New York City now that a French fleet 
would assist them? Clinton left Philadelphia in order to 
prevent such a disaster. Washington was close after him, 
and attacked the British rear column at Monmouth, New 
Jersey, on the 2Sth of June, 1778. General Charles Lee 
had meanwhile been exclianged. His perfidy was unknown 
to Washington, and he was in command. At a critical 
moment, when everything promised victory for the Ameri- 
cans, Lee ordered a retreat. Wasliington's timely presence 
prevented the utter rout of the Americans. Lee was soon 
after expelled from the army. The French fleet failed to 



1778-1779I 'HE FRONTIER 213 

co-opcratc with Washington against New York, because 
some of the ships drew too much water to get over the bar, 
CHnton was thus left in possession, though closely watched 
and really invested by Washington's army, which was 
posted from Morristown to West Point. If the h^-ench 
fleet could shut off supplies by sea, Clinton would be in a 
critical position. Washington must be drawn away from 
the Hudson. Clinton therefore sent an expedition to rav- 
age Connecticut, hoping that Washington would weaken 
his position by sending a detachment in pursuit. On the 
contrary, Washington sent General Anthony Wayne to 
storm Stony l'(Mnt, a strong British outi)ost. Wayne's 
assault and capture of the fort, July 19, 1779, was the most 
brilliant action of the war, and one of the most brilliant in 
military annals. Clinton discovered that his Connecticut 
marauders would be needed in New York, and he quickly 
recalled them. Washington had outgeneraled Clinton at 
Stony Point, as he had outgeneraled Cornwallis at Trentcni 
in December, 1776. 

A part of the British policy was to carry on an incessant 
Indian war along the frontier. Aided by the Tories, under 
Butler, the savages, led by Joseph iirant, a half-breed, 
fell upon the inhabitants of the Wyoming Valley, Pennsyl- 
vania, in July, 1778. The horrors of this massacre have 
never been surpassed. Another massacre, in Cherry Valley, 
New York, occurred in November. In the following year, 
(jeneral Sullivan led an army into central New York and 
struck the Six Nations a terrible blow, from which they never 
recovered. The Tories, too, were quelled. l^>om Detroit 
as a center, the Jkitish planned an Indian rising throughout 
the West. The settlements all along the frontier should be 
destroyed. But a young Virginian, George Rogers Clarke, 
hearing of this, boldly took the offensive, and in two cam- 
paigns, in 177H-79, so thoroughly vanquished the savages 
and their liritish leaders, the chief of whom, Hamilton, he 
captured at Vincennes, that the whole country, from Penn- 
sylvania to the Mississippi, and from Lake Superior to the 
Ohio, was conquered American soil. This secured the 
Northwest to the United States. South of the river Ohio, 
immigrants were moving across the mountains, from the 



214 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1775-1776 

CaroHnas, led by James Robertson, into Wautauga, called 
Franklin, and later, Tennessee; from Virginia, led by Dan- 
iel Boone, into Kentucky. Both of these new settlements 
were the scenes of terrible conflicts with the Indians, who, it 
was believed, were incited and secretl}' aided by the Brit- 
ish. Indeed, all through the Revolution the frontier was the 
post of constant danger and ceaseless Indian attack. The 
young West was passing through a terrible trial of Indian 
atrocities, encouraged, if not instigated, by British ofificers. 

When the war opened, the Americans had no army, no 
navy, no general government. The Congress of 1775 
assumed control of public affairs, though with hesitation. 
It adopted the military companies around Boston as the 
"continental army," and in December, 1775, began the 
organization of a navy by ordering thirteen cruisers to be 
built and equipped. But England controlled the sea, and 
Congress knew that it was hopeless to try to contend with 
so mighty a sea-power, save by privateering. Therefore, 
letters of marque and reprisal were granted freely to Ameri- 
can ship-owners, and hundreds of barks, brigs, and schoon- 
ers, that recently had been carrying cargoes about the world, 
were converted into privateers, to fall upon English ships, 
of whatever kind and wherever found. English commerce 
suffered heavily, and shipping rates greatly increased. The 
policy of Congress by sea was like Washington's by land — 
to harass the enemy, to destroy his supplies, and to wear 
him out. Under the circumstances, what other policy was 
possible? 

When the war closed, the country was without a navy, 
because the ships converted into men-of-war — not over 
thirty in all — had been lost or were not worth maintaining. 
Small as our navy had been, it had captured a hundred 
British ships of war. The number of prizes taken is un- 
known, but it was among the thousands. English merchants 
complained that the ocean swarmed with "American 
pirates." Congress called them privateers. 

But the naval history of the Revolution is not wholly 
of privateering. Early in 1776, Congress collected a fleet 
of eight ships at Philadelphia. They were merchantmen, 
slightly remodeled and armed. As they sailed down the 



17771 PAUL JONES 215 

Delaware a yellow flag was seen flying from the masthead 
of the flag-ship, and on the flag was a curious device: a sort 
of American coat-of-arms, a pine-tree, a rattlesnake coiled, 
and the good advice, "Don't tread on me." A young 
lieutenant had run up the flag; his name was John Paul 
Jones. It was the American flag, and hundreds had been 
fluttering about the city. One of them is now preserved 
in the old State House in Philadelphia. Paul Jones was 
the first man to hoist the American flag on the deck of a 
ship. Nearly two years later, in November, 1777, he left 
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in search of British ships. 
He overhauled his ship at Brest, France, and then fell 
upon whatever came in his way in the channels and in the 
Irish Sea. 

Never before had such an embodiment of terror and 
destruction been seen in those waters, and exaggerated 
accounts of his prowess preceded him. He boldly entered 
the harbor of Whitehaven and burned the shipping before 
the eyes of the astonished people. He burned merchant- 
men at sea, and making prize of an armed schooner, the 
Drake, returned to Brest. His exploits were considered 
rather irregular by some Americans high in authority, but 
Franklin was his steadfast friend. Through his efforts, 
Jones was given five vessels, and wath these he started again 
for the English coast. His flag-ship, Bonhomme Richard, 
or Poor Richard, was destined to a most famous career. 
On the night of September 23, 1779, while off Flamborough 
Head, he met a British frigate, the Serapis. The ships 
grappled and were quickly lashed together. Jones was in 
his element. When the masts of the Bonhomme Richard 
were shot away, its rotten hulk sinking and its deck covered 
with dead and dying, the English captain summoned Jones 
to surrender. "Surrender," shouted Jones; "I have just 
begun to fight." 

For three hours, in the clear moonlight, the fearful fight 
went on. Then the Serapis struck her colors. The Poor 
Richard was barely afloat. Forced to abandon her, Jones 
cut the ropes that bound her to the captured ship, and she 
sank out of sight. He sailed in his prize to Holland. From 
this moonlight night in September, the American navy took 



2i6 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1778- 1780 

to itself a name and a place in the world. Congress ordered 
a medal to be struck in honor of Paul Jones. Other fame 
was in store for him. James Fenimore Cooper, in 1823, 
made his exploits the basis of one of his greatest stories, 
The Pilot. While the Scrapis and the Richard were en- 
gaged in this terrible fight, the Pallas, one of Jones's fleet, 
had captured the Countess of Scarborough. Captain Lan- 
dais, of the Alliance, another of the American fleet, had 
fired now at one English ship, now at another, but repeat- 
edly poured his broadside into the Richard, working havoc 
and persuading her men that the Alliance was an English 
ship. In vain did Jones order and protest. Landais was 
either a traitor, as many still believe, or insane. He had 
powerful friends, and when, soon after, he was deposed 
from his command and expelled from the navy, it was 
claimed that he had been treated unjustly. History, how- 
ever, has never been able to remove his name from the list 
of American traitors. 

In December, 1778, the British began a series of cam- 
paigns to conquer the Southern states. They had failed to 
conquer New England. Washington had compelled them 
to evacuate Boston, March 17, 1776. Their triple effort 
to conquer New York had ended with Burgoyne's surrender, 
October 17, 1777. They had evacuated Philadelphia, June 
18, 1778. Thus their grand plan to divide the states had 
not only badly miscarried, but left them only standing- 
ground in New York City. Washington cut off their sup- 
plies by land ; the P'rench fleet might cut them off by sea, 
though this was improbable. 

Their southern plan was at first successful. Georgia 
was overrun in 1779, Savannah was taken, and a royal 
governor installed. Late in the autumn. General Lincoln, 
supported by a French fleet, attempted to recapture Savan- 
nah, but was defeated and driven away, with great loss. 
Charleston was next attacked. Against the advice of Wash- 
ington, Lincoln tried to hold the place, but on the 12th of 
May, 1780, was compelled to surrender it, with his whole 
army, to Sir Henry Clinton. Leaving Lord Cornwall is in 
command, Clinton returned to New York. 

The Tories were numerous in the South, and a fierce 



i77S| BENEDICT ARNOLD 217 

partisan warfare made the Carolinas like the savage frontier. 
Lincoln's disaster happily did not overwhelm the patriots. 
A new army was collected, and Congress gave the command 
to Gates. At Camden, on the i6th of August, 1780, he 
was defeated by Cornwallis, and barely saved his army from 
utter destruction. It was the worst defeat suffered by the 
Americans during the war. It showed what sort of a sol- 
dier the "cabal" would have put in Washington's place. 
Georgia and the Carolinas were now British territory again, 
except where the brave bands of the gallant leaders Sum- 
ter, Marion, and Pickens kept up the fight. 

When the British evacuated Philadelphia, in 1778, 
General Benedict Arnold was stationed there. His repu- 
tation for bravery and capacity was not excelled by that of 
any ofificer in the army. His march into Canada, his assault 
on Quebec, his defeat of Burgoyne at Bemis Pleights, were 
enough to make a great name for any man. On account 
of a troublesome wound received at Quebec, he, at his own 
request, had been retired from active duty and put in com- 
mand at Philadelphia. There he lived beyond his means, 
violated the rules of war, and being of a choleric temper, 
offended the people of the city, Congress, and the com- 
mander-in-chief. Congress ordered Washington to repri- 
mand him for his delinquencies as an officer. Arnold 
resolved on revenge. He asked to be put in charge of 
West Point, the most important fort on the Hudson, 
secretly resolving to deliver it to Sir Henry Clinton, and 
thus accomplish by treason what the British had been unable 
to accomplish by arms. Before leaving Philadelphia, he 
began negotiations with Clinton. At last, Arnold arranged 
to meet in person, near Stony Point, the representative ol 
Clinton, Major John Andr^. Having completed the details 
for the surrender of the fort, Arnold returned to it, and 
Andre set out for New York, but was arrested by three 
Americans, who, not at first suspecting him, at last searched 
him, and were astounded to find in one of his stockings 
papers written and signed by Arnold. Not comprehending 
the plot, they decided to hold "John Anderson," as Andre 
was described in the papers, as a suspicious character, and 
delivered him to the nearest officer, who, equally unsuspi- 



2i8 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1^80 

cious, at once reported the capture to Arnold. This enabled 
Arnold to make his escape. Andr^ was tried by a military 
court, was found guilty of being a spy, and was hanged. 

When news of Arnold's treason spread through the 
country, coming as it did at the heels of many southern 
disasters, it seemed for a time as if the patriot cause were 
doomed. Who could be trusted? How could the South 
be regained? Then, too, at this time, the paper money of 
Congress, the "continental bills of credit," ceased to 
have any value. A wagon-load of them would not buy a 
loaf of bread. It seemed as if all disasters had befallen the 
Americans at once. The year 1780 was the gloomiest in 
American history. 

But where defeat had been worst, there came victory. 
The tide was now turning. Five days after the death of 
Andre, a British force of some eleven hundred men, includ- 
ing many Tories, ventured too far into the mountains of 
North Carolina, and on the 7th of October was cut off by 
the "backwoodsmen of the Carolinas" at King's Mountain. 
Greatly encouraged, the patriots of the two states gathered 
together a third army, and many regiments from the north 
were joined with it, all under command of the second sol- 
dier of the Revolution, Nathaniel Greene. Under him was 
the famous cavalry officer Daniel Morgan, of Virginia, who 
had won great fame at Saratoga. 

Chief of the British cavalry officers was Colonel Banastre 
Tarleton, whose exploits had made his name a terror in the 
South. At the Cowpens, on the 17th of January, 1781, 
Morgan, with nine hundred men met Tarleton with more 
than eleven hundred in open field. Tarleton at last escaped 
with two hundred and seventy men, leaving nearly as many 
dead or wounded, and six hundred prisoners. Of Morgan's 
men, sixty-one were wounded and twelve killed. 

His ablest officer defeated, Cornwallis now started out 
to destroy Greene as he had destroyed Gates. But Greene 
was content to wear out the British army, as his own was 
not strong enough to risk a battle. Then began a masterly 
retreat, with Cornwallis close at his heels, and both generals 
maneuvering for the advantage of position. Vov two hun- 
dred miles the race ran on. Cornwallis wearying of the 



1781] YORKTOWN 219 

chase, fell back to Guilford Court House. Greene followed, 
and a battle was fought. Greene was defeated, but the 
British army was too exhausted to pursue him. Cornwallis 
was far from his supplies, and he now began a retreat toward 
Wilmington, North Carolina. Greene pursued him hotly. 
Believing that Cornwallis could be of little harm if left 
behind, Greene suddenly left him and turned toward 
Charleston and Savannah. Cornwallis turned north and 
took position at Petersburg, Virginia. 

At Hobkirk's Hill, April 25. and at Eutaw Springs, 
September 8, 1781, Greene, though not victorious, was 
enabled to free the greater part of the Carolinas of British 
troops, so that Charleston was all that was left to them, and 
this because of their powerful fleet. Greene had succeeded 
in cutting off Cornwallis and his army from Charleston, and 
thus he maneuvered the enemy out of the state. 

When Cornwallis reached Virginia, he found Benedict 
Arnold and a British force burning and plundering the tide- 
water country. Sending him back to New York, for he 
despised him, he joined Arnold's force to his own and began 
a campaign against Lafayette, who had been trying to get 
hold of Arnold. But orders came to Cornwallis to select 
some Virginia seaport town, to fortify it, and to make it 
his headquarters. He chose Yorktown, and by the ist of 
August was strongly intrenched there with seven thousand 
men. Thus far in the war, a British army in a seaport 
town was thought to be safe from harm, because of the 
English fleet, but Count de Grasse had recently arrived 
with a French fleet. 

On the 14th of August, 1781, Washington, whose 
headquarters were at West Point, was informed that the 
French fleet was sailing for the Chesapeake. He at once 
planned the campaign. His own army and the fleet should 
co-operate. The fleet would cut off Cornwallis by sea, the 
army would cut him off by land. Clinton half expected 
such a joint attack on himself at New York. Before he 
knew Washington's intention, the American army was at 
Philadelphia, on its way to Yorktown. Cornwallis urged 
Clinton to send him reinforcements. Instead, he sent 
Arnold to burn New London and other Connecticut towns 



220 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1781 

along the sound. But the ruse was too evident. Wash- 
ington and the French fleet had started for Yorktown, and 
there they met and hemmed in the British army on every 
side. 

Of the sixteen thousand men in the American army 
before Yorktown, four thousand were Frenchmen, com- 
manded by Count Rochambeau. On the 19th of October, 
1 78 1, CornwalHs surrendered, but not in person, as he 
pleaded sickness. His sword was delivered by General 
O'Hara to General Lincoln, whom Washington designated 
to receive it. And the news swiftly went over the land, 
"CornwalHs has surrendered; independence is won." 
When Lord North, the prime minister, heard the news, he 
could only exclaim, "It is all over." 

But a year passed before a preliminary treaty of peace 
was signed,* and nearly two years before a final treaty was 
made.f By the first, the boundaries of the United States 
were agreed on; by the second, all points of difference 
between the two countries were amicably settled. The 
treaty was negotiated at Versailles; was signed by Dr. 
Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, at Paris, and was 
ratified by Congress, January 14, 1784. Hostilities ceased 
soon after the surrender of CornwalHs, and within a year 
from the day of the preliminary treaty the last British sol- 
dier left the country. Evacuation day, November 25, 1783, 
was celebrated with great festivity in New York City, till 
within recent years. 

Our original national boundaries were fixed by agree- 
ment with England, France, and Spain. As there had 
never been any surveys, or even maps or explorations, that 
showed the lines finally agreed to, they were arbitrarily laid 
down, each nation trying to get as much as possible for 
itself. In fact, the boundaries were only vaguely described ; 
the exact location was to be determined later. As all later 
boundary treaties with England had their basis in the treaty 
of 1783, it may be said that by this treaty the Canadian line 
from the Lake of the Woods to Maine was as it is to-day. 
The Maine boundary was left unsettled. The Mississippi 

* November 30, 1782. 
t September 3, 1783. 



1781-1783] FINAL TREATIES 221 

was made our western boundary down to thirty-one degrees 
north latitude. From this point the line ran eastward along 
this parallel to the Appalachicola River. The remainder 
of the southern boundary coincides with the northern boun- 
dary of the state of Florida. The eastern boundary was 
the Atlantic shore. 

The two Floridas were given to Spain as her share of 
the spoils. She had declared war against England in 1779, 
and at once sent an expedition from Louisiana into Florida 
and seized the whole peninsula. Spain also insisted on 
having all of King George's "Indian Country" — that is, the 
entire region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. 
France favored this claim from the Ohio southward. Dr. 
Franklin and his colleagues secured the Mississippi as our 
western boundary by a secret treaty with the British com- 
missioners. We owe the final terms to the firmness of our 
three commissioners. 

As the result of the treaty, Spain was our neighbor on 
the west and south ; England (Canada) on the north. The 
people of the United States were a new nation ; they num- 
ber about three and a quarter millions, and their country 
contained about eight hundred and thirty thousand square 
miles. Had our allies France and Spain prevailed, the 
area would not have been half as large. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE LEAGUE OF STATES 

1776-1787 

The Revolution of 1776 was the uprising of the people 
of the colonies against the administration of government 
in the British Empire. Before the war the colonies were 
an integral part of the empire, and on a plane of civil equal- 
ity among themselves. The Revolution knew no preced- 
ence among the colonies, and the people of no colony can 
be said to have had the priority in right of leadership in 
the war. The people acted as a unit. Separate and inde- 
pendent state revolt from British authority was unknown. 
Representation in the general assemblies was familiar to all 
the people, and when the time for concerted action came 
they followed the familiar course of choosing representa- 
tives to a continental congress as they had long been accus- 
tomed to choose representatives to their local assemblies, 
each of which had considered only the wants of the colony 
it represented. The Congress took into consideration the 
general welfare of America. 

To the first Continental Congress, which assembled in 
Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774, delegates came 
from all the colonies except Georgia, chosen, as we have 
seen, in some by the members of assembly, in some by a 
convention specially called by the electors in the colony, 
and in others by the provincial Congress, The persons so 
chosen described themselves in their acts as "The Delegates 
Appointed by the Good People of the Colonies," making 
no reference to the several states as independent or sover- 
eign. This Congress was a convention of the whole people, 
and therefore national in character; but considered as a 
government it was temporary, revolutionary, experimental, 
and imperfect in organization. 

The acts of this Congress were of national importance. 



1775] CONGRESS 233 

It forbade, by its non-importation agreement, the importa- 
tion of merchandise from Great Britain, or the exportation 
of merchandise to Great Britain ; it issued a declaration of 
rights, and framed an address to the king and another to 
the people of England. 

Returning to the body of the people, its delegates con- 
tinued the national movement by explaining the situation 
of affairs to those who had elected them, and by making 
common information of the opinions of the people in all 
parts of America. The essential function of this Congress 
was to disseminate opinions. Delegates from New England 
met delegates from Virginia and the Carolinas, and for the 
first time in American history the dominating thoughts of 
the hour were made known to all the people of America. 
Popular approval of the acts of this Congress was shown by 
the re-election of most of the delegates to attend a second 
Congress, which met at Philadelphia on the loth of May, 
1775. The majority of these delegates were chosen in 
conventions called for the purpose; the minority were 
chosen by the members of the assemblies. The manner of 
choosing delegates deserves more than passing notice. The 
convention is peculiar to American political history. Here 
it originated and here it remains, an instrument in popular 
government used to ascertain the will of the people. The 
convention is representation applied to party politics, as the 
legislature is representation applied to civil affairs. In our 
day it is the recognized means for nominating party candi- 
dates, for ascertaining the bearing of party ideas, and for 
uniting all the forces of the party in one purpose at one 
time. At critical times in the history of a state a conven- 
tion is assembled to frame a new constitution of govern- 
ment, or amendments to the old one. 

The acts of the second Congress, being national in char- 
acter, were of wider application than were the acts of the 
Congress of the previous year. The people had approved 
the course of the first Congress, and had given themselves 
over to the Revolutionary cause. Resting on the popular 
will, the second Congress assumed control of affairs by a 
series of acts which condemned their authors as conspirators 
and traitors or exalted them as patriots. They proceeded to 



224 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776 

regulate commerce; to provide funds for a national govern- 
ment; to create executive departments of state, of the war, 
of the navy, and of tlie post-oflfice ; and to crown all their 
acts, they issued the Declaration of Independence, The 
validity of all these acts rested thenceforth on the events 
of the war. If the people would fight for the principles of 
the Declaration of Independence, and if the American 
armies triumphed, then must Great Britain and other 
nations recognize the independence of the United States. 

The standing armies of the nations of the world to-day 
demonstrate what confidence exists between nations in the 
notion "that the mission of man is peace." A century 
has not changed the essential principles of nationality which 
were so closely examined at the time of the American and 
French revolutions, namely, that the condition of nation- 
ality is one of armed protection ; for no nation will keep its 
treaties unless it is compelled to, and no nation will compel 
the keeping of a treaty which is not to its own interest. 
Arbitration means compromise, and its methods are as old 
as disputes among men; but arbitration between nations is 
improbable, and scarcely possible, unless they are of equal 
power. It would have been impossible to arbitrate the 
difference between the colonies and the home government 
in 1776. No government can arbitrate with rebels, and 
the Americans in 1776 were rebels. If successful, they 
became revolutionists and founders of a new state, makers 
of a new nation. Arbitration was possible after the defin- 
itive treaty of peace, not before. The dispute about the 
taxing power had gone beyond the stage of declaration of 
rights, of petitions, of expostulation ; the differences between 
the Americans and the English government touched on the 
vital principles of that government, its right to tax its citi- 
zens. The right was not disputed as an abstract right 
in government; the dispute suddenly became of uncom- 
promising difificulty, — which government shall tax the 
Americans, the English government or one instituted by the 
Americans themselves? War, and war only, could decide 
this question. 

The delegates to the second Congress were not chosen 
directly by the people ; but as we now choose the President 



1776] PUBLIC MEN 325 

of the United States, by an indirect vote of the electors. 
The electors choose the members of the conventions or the 
members of the assembHes, and the conventions or the 
assembhes choose the delegates to Congress. It will never 
again be possible in America to enter upon the foundation 
of government in so indirect a manner as was followed in 
1776. It was then thought that such a system must result 
in the choice of the best men, the idea prevailing that the 
masses of the people were incapable of deciding for them- 
selves what was for their own interests, and therefore an 
intermediate body, acting as a discriminating committee, 
would choose most wisely. There seems to have been no 
organized opposition to the application of this idea in 
American civil affairs until nearly forty years after the 
national Constitution was made, and nearly fifty years 
after the Declaration of Independence was issued. 

In the application of this indirect method of obtaining 
the will of the people, it followed that the control of public 
affairs fell into the hands of a few men best known to the 
community, to the state, and to the nation. 

Under the administration of this system there were no 
dark horses in American politics. There were few obscure 
men in the early congresses. There were delegates more 
widely known than others, as Franklin and Washington and 
John Hancock were more widely known than Willing or 
Hall or Bland; but not one member of the Congress was 
without reputation in his own community, nor wholly 
unknown throughout his own state. 

The process of selection incident to the indirect choice 
of delegates doubtless resulted in a more able gathering of 
men than could have been made by the modern system of 
party organization, which usually effects the election of the 
man whom the machinery of party politics may take up. 
The essential difference between the politics of that day and 
of this is the difference between individuals and party 
organization; then individuals got along without parties; 
now parties get along without individuals; then the man 
was chosen because he was known as pre-eminent in civil 
affairs, or as capable of pre-eminence; now the man is 
chosen because he stands for the accepted doctrine of an 



226 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776 

organized party, is the concrete expression of that party, 
and loses his identity in that party. 

A later democratic revolution, that of 1825, overthrew 
the indirect method of electing public officers in this coun- 
try. Up to that event the colonial and English, indeed 
a federalistic, notion prevailed that the people as a mass 
were incapable of government, and therefore representatives 
of the people should be indirectly chosen. But somewhat 
paradoxically, the results of the democratic revolution have 
not been wholly democratic, but have resulted in the cre- 
ation of a party power which quite as seldom represents the 
wishes of the individual electors as did the indirect choice 
of public officials a century or less ago. The convention, 
which was devised by Americans as a means to an end, has 
become the end itself, and scarcely an office of importance 
in state or nation can now be obtained without first winning 
a convention. So complete is the change, that an elector 
to-day seldom thinks of voting against the candidate for the 
presidency who has received the nomination in a convention 
of the party to which the elector belongs, even if the nomi- 
nation does not fully please the elector. A slight exami- 
nation of present politics will illustrate how little, after all, 
is the difference between the manner of choosing delegates 
to Congress in 1776 and at the present time. The appli- 
cation of the representative system to politics, as well as to 
government, must take from the people the direct control 
of public affairs. Whatever system of electing officials in 
a representative government might be followed, that system 
itself would ultimately illustrate the representative idea. 
The most democratic government in the world could not 
exist without the machinery of this representative system. 
The control of government must of necessity fall into the 
hands of a few men. 

Let no one imagine that bossism in politics is a modern 
American disease. Bossism is the name of a system of 
representative government abused. In a republic like our 
own, in which the people care more for material welfare 
than for forms of government or for politics, bossism as an 
evil is yet in the infancy of its history. The representative 
idea in government is good if well applied, but extremely 



1765-1789] PUBLIC MEN 227 

dangerous when ill applied. The struggle for wealth dulls 
the caution of the citizen so that he delegates his political 
power carelessly, or even with a feeling of relief. Caring 
little for government or politics himself, he cannot expect 
that his deputy and representative will care more. Bossism 
becomes a fact when the electors are indifferent to whom 
they delegate their political powers. The abuse of the 
representative system springs naturally from indifference 
and the neglect of the electors to give personal attention 
to their political rights and duties. 

The delegates to the first Congress probably represented 
the people of their day as closely as do our representatives 
in Congress at the present time. If the whole list from 
1774 to 1789 be scanned, there will be found on the roll the 
name of almost every distinguished man in America at that 
time. Not all members of the Congress of the confederation 
nor of the Congress before the confederation were "giants 
in those days." It has become common to speak of these 
early congresses as composed wholly of such men as Jeffer- 
son, John Adams, or John Jay. This is a mistake. There 
were pygmies among the giants; and there has been an 
exaltation of the giants and an utter oblivion of the pyg- 
mies. 

Of the public men of the Revolutionary period, from 
1765 to 1789, a period of a quarter of a century, the num- 
ber perhaps reaches three hundred, eminent both in state 
and national politics; but of that three hundred, or less, 
not above fifty can be classed with the leaders of the time 
in Europe or with the leaders of subsequent critical periods 
in our own history. Of these fifty, we have named the 
greatest when we name Franklin and Washington, Jefferson 
and Hamilton, Madison and Marshall, Morris and Adams, 
Rutledge and Jay. In the thirteen state legislatures was a 
body of men in training; in Congress, the majority of dele- 
gates were men who may be described in the language of 
politics as safe men. But the great leaders soon left both 
assemblies and Congress, and became actively engaged with 
Washington in military affairs or with Franklin in the diplo- 
matic service. The daily civil tasks of the Revolution were 
performed, as they are always performed in government, 



228 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776-1789 

b}' industrious men quite unknown to fame. As the char- 
acter of the Revolution is more perfectly understood, the 
work of the American patriots is not seen in diminished 
luster. They did what they did in conformity with the 
course of their own experience as colonists, and perhaps 
with illumination from such political writers as Montes- 
quieu, John Locke, and John Milton. They laid down the 
principles of government with a precision almost axiomatic; 
this was their work in the world. But their failure in the 
administration of government was almost as remarkable as 
their success in fixing its political principles. 

Our age is the age of the administration, not of the 
foundation of governments. Nor have our legislators yet 
succeeded in determining the axioms of administration. 
The American Revolution probably settled forever in this 
country the principles on which government is founded, 
but it settled nothing in the administration of government. 
We shall soon discover, in our brief examination of the 
conduct of public affairs by the Continental Congress and by 
the Congress of the confederation, that never in the world's 
history, in a government of intelligent men, was there a 
worse administration of public affairs than in America from 
1776 to 1789. Administration, as we now understand that 
term, was to the early American legislators and their col- 
leagues in office a word of almost unknown meaning. 
There were men, few indeed in number, who understood 
the meaning of the term, but, like Hamilton, they were 
admired rather than followed. The whole effort of admin- 
istration in the confederation broke down at last; nor was 
it till Hamilton, a master of administration, had become 
Secretary of the Treasury under the national Constitution 
that the transition was made from the Revolutionary period 
of the formulation of governmental principles to the national 
period of application of those principles to the welfare of 
the nation. 

We do not wrong the memory of our fathers if we dis- 
cover in their work an almost unavoidable incompleteness. 
They could, and they did, found a government, but they 
could not succeed in administering it as it was organized 
under the Articles of Coafederation. Nor was their failure 



1776] THE SECOND CONGRESS 229 

conspicuous or solitary in that age of the world. Neither 
England nor France succeeded so well, either in the found- 
ing of governments or in the application of political prin- 
ciples, as did the members of the American congresses from 
1774 to 1789. The effort of England in administration is 
told by one of her most eminent public servants and his- 
torians. Sir Thomas Erskine May; and the struggle of 
France, both in founding governments and in attempting 
to administer them, may be traced in the confessional 
memoirs of Talleyrand, who participated in them as did no 
other Frenchman. The period of the American Revolution 
was the age of constitution-making; of the founding of 
states, and of the declaration of the principles of govern- 
ment. The course of events on this continent was only one 
part of that larger action going on throughout the world, 
the establishment of representative government. But the 
chief characteristic of the whole age was the determination 
of the principles of government, not the determination of 
the best administration of government. That is the chief 
problem of the age in which we live. 

The second Congress, like its successors to this day, was 
a national body of delegates. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was "of these united colonies." The states were 
free and independent in their unity. No individual colony 
claimed a separate act of independence from Great Britain. 
The instrument of formal separation uses the expression, 
"the good people of these colonies," as descriptive of one 
sovereign, political body of society — the people of the 
United States. Three states. South Carolina, New Jersey, 
and New Hampshire, adopted their first constitutions before 
the Declaration of Independence was issued. The first 
Congress, on the 3d of November, 1775, had recommended 
that the colonies, pending the dispute with Parliament, 
"should organize such governments" as would "best pro- 
mote the happiness of the people"; but the governments 
so formed were provisional in the first two states that acted ; 
in New Hampshire, which framed a constitution at Exeter, 
on the 5th of January, and New Jersey, which, on the 3d 
of July, 1776, issued a constitution of government with this 
clause: "Provided alwavs, and it is the true intent of this 



230 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776 

Congress, that if a reconciliation between Great Britain and 
these colonies should take place, and the latter be taken 
again under the protection and government of the crown of 
Great Britain, this charter" (that is, the New Jersey consti- 
tution)* "shall be null and void, otherwise to remain firm 
and inviolable. " From the language of this clause it is plain 
that New Jersey did not claim separate independence, but 
that the action of the state depended finally upon the ' ' recon- 
ciliation between Great Britain and these colonies." The 
Declaration of Independence itself is a compend and resum^ 
of various earlier declarations and resolutions, made either 
by the first Congress or by conventions and assemblies in 
various colonies. It presents in a simple, brief, and orderly 
manner the common opinion of the people and its pro- 
visions, now somewhat obscure, evidently illustrated and 
explained incidents familiar to the public mind. Perhaps 
no state paper in American history is more famous, and no 
state paper of the Revolutionary period is more obscure. 

Virginia, on the 29th of June of the year of the Decla- 
ration, had issued a declaration affirming that "the govern- 
ment of this country, as formerly exercised by the crown of 
Great Britain, is totally dissolved." The phrase "govern- 
ment of this country" referred to the colonies as a unit, and 
not to the state of Virginia alone. It is just to conclude, 
therefore, that the separation from Great Britain was not a 
separation by individual states, but of united colonies. The 
people as a political unit, as a nation, formed the separat- 
ing mass, elected delegates to a national congress, and 
inaugurated a national government. The struggle between 
people and king and people and Parliament won a vaster 
triumph than mere popular representation in a colonial 
assembly. The victory had been nearly won in the several 
colonial legislatures, but it was incomplete until the national 
government was established. At the time when the Dec- 
laration of Independence was issued, neither the people nor 
the leaders saw clearly the ultimate consequence of their 
act, and but few of the greatest minds saw the consequence 
near at hand. There existed a strong anti-revolutionary 
feeling in the colonies, which the British government failed 

* 1 776- 1 844. 



1776-1789] FRANKLIN 231 

to nourish into a political party, but which unorganized 
was still strong enough, had a full vote been polled on the 
question of separation from Great Britain, to have held the 
balance of power. But the friends of king and Parliament 
were at the negative pole of events; the friends of inde- 
pendence were radical in their ideas and aggressive in their 
acts. 

An examination of the age of the men of the Revolution 
discloses, what all revolutions disclose, that few old men 
took an initiative and active part in the movement. Frank- 
lin will at once come to mind as an exception, but Franklin 
was a peculiar man, and not a type of the men of his gener- 
ation, or indeed of any other. At the time when the Dec- 
laration of Independence was issued he was a little past 
seventy years of age, a time of life when the few who reach 
it are only too willing to retire from active pursuits, when 
the body is usually feeble and the mind is in sympathy with 
the body. But Franklin at seventy was still a young man. 
He never became old, like most men, for throughout life he 
assiduously cultivated the society of the choicest youth 
whom he could gather about him by the pleasing attractions 
of a winning manner, an inexhaustible information, and an 
incomparable wit. He represented every generation that 
had come upon the stage during his time. He lived in the 
present, and unlike other men of his years, he looked into 
the future. He was fond of new things, yet never a radi- 
cal; he was Socratic in his wisdom, yet never a pedant. 

He had differed from the Society of Friends in opinion, 
and had opposed them in the management of affairs in 
Pennsylvania. He had argued against the treatment of 
the colonies by Parliament at the bar of the House of 
Commons, and with members of Parliament at their homes; 
yet he had intimate and devoted friends among the Quakers 
and among the leaders of both houses of Parliament. He 
had long been known to the world as a philosopher, yet 
his whole philosophy is the present-day wisdom of common 
sense which everybody delights in and few possess. He 
assiduously applied himself to the solution of the immediate 
questions of the day and to the exposition and satisfaction 
of the immediate wants of man. His keen, practical mind 



232 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776 

detected the signs of the times, and identifying himself 
with younger men, he easily directed them by his counsel, 
while they imagined that they were using his name in 
furthering their political schemes or their individual ambi- 
tion. 

When the hour of the Revolution struck, Franklin was 
ready, calm, confident, discerning, philosophical, sur- 
rounded by the choicest youth of the city of his adoption, 
and by the ardent spirits of all the colonies, who doubtless 
would have acted without him, but who harmoniously acted 
with him. His whole career as a leader in the Revolution 
was in perfect keeping with his course of life as a citizen of 
Philadelphia for half a century before the Revolution came. 
Of all the men who bore a part in the great events of that 
age, in Franklin, more than any other, was the embodiment 
of the highest type of colonial America. He stood for 
colonial experience, and colonial experience was the finding 
of the principles of representative government. A century 
of struggle for popular rights had preceded the calling of 
the second Congress. As the struggle assumed national 
proportions, one by one those who had enlisted in the popu- 
lar cause fell away. It was reserved for Franklin, the son 
of an obscure candle-maker of Boston, to come at the last, 
when the forensic battle had become a contest of arms, and 
to aid the youth and middle-aged patriots of 1776 to organ- 
ize a government on the liberal principles for which the 
colonists had so long contended. And when peace came, 
Franklin, still spared for greater service to his country, 
gave the full strength of a life culminating in benefits to 
his race to the establishment of more perfect union and 
the making of the Constitution of the United States. In 
Franklin the old and the new met; the experience and the 
aspirations of colonial days, and the possibilities of the new 
nation, founded on the firm basis of representative govern- 
ment. 

Of Franklin's colleagues in the second Congress, Wash- 
ington was at the age of forty-four, and Jefferson ten years 
younger; John Adams was forty- one, Robert Morris a year 
his senior; Roger Sherman, fifty-five. But among his con- 
temporaries were young men who were destined to lofty 



1776 THE LEADERS 233 

services to their country, both in military and civil life. 
When Franklin and Sherman and Adams and Jefferson 
affixed their names to the Declaration of Independence, 
Madison was but twenty-six, Rufus King twenty-one, 
James Wilson thirty-four, and Alexander Hamilton scarcely 
nineteen. These younger men, and others less famed, were 
soon to be associated with Franklin and Washington and 
Sherman in Congress, and later, in that unrivaled gathering 
of statesmen who gave to the world the Constitution of the 
United States. Much of the vigor of thought and of lan- 
guage in the political literature of the Revolutionary period 
is explicable when we consider the significance of the prin- 
ciples involved, and the age and temperament, the education 
and surroundings, of the orators, the writers, the pamphlet- 
eers, and the chroniclers of that day. The glory of nation- 
ality appealed to such different minds as that of Adams, of 
Sherman, and of Jefferson. 

To Franklin, independence and nationality came as the 
fruit of a tree long since planted in America, the ripening 
of events steadily moving forward to this consummation. 
To the ardent mind of Hamilton, nationality was the new- 
found opportunity of civilization and the fair realization of 
ideas more pleasing than even philosophers had seen in their 
visions of a perfect government. To the people at large, 
nationality was only a name for a deflection of taxes for 
local purposes as their representatives might choose. Less 
wrought up than their leaders, the people followed Con- 
gress; but as times darkened into days of defeat, of anni- 
hilation of credit, and of civil confusion, the people followed 
Congress at an ever-increasing distance. If the people 
suffered, they blamed Congress. If victory was won, they 
forgot Congress, and remembered only the soldiery. The 
states, having quickly reorganized their civil affairs on the 
colonial model, made clearer distinctions between the divi- 
sions of government than had before prevailed, but each 
followed the threefold division of powers. 

With this precedent before Congress, it is, at first 
thought, strange that it erred so seriously when it organ- 
ized the confederation. But the confederation was an 
experiment. On the iith of June, 1776, Congress ap- 



234 THE LEAGUE OF SIATES [1776 

pointed two committees, one to frame a declaration of 
independence, the other to draw up a plan for a general 
government. The report of the first committee was favor- 
ably, almost unanimously, received, and after slight modi- 
fications of Jefferson's draft, which was the report of the 
committee, it was adopted, and published on the 4th of July 
following as the unanimous declaration of the delegates. 
On the 8th of July, the committee on the Articles of Con- 
federation brought in its report, but nearly five years passed 
before the articles proposed were adopted. As the states, 
when they took up civil government, had organized under 
state constitutions closely following colonial precedents long 
familiar, so the committee on the Declaration found a com- 
mon stock of grievances, and expostulatory resolutions from 
town political clubs, from conventions in remote corners of 
the states, from legislatures and assemblies, from congresses 
of states, and from the first Congress of the United States. 
These complaints were so well known to the committee 
that it seems to have turned over to Jefferson the consider- 
ation and expression of a matter of such common report, 
practically withdrawing their several sketches of a declara- 
tion. When the committee brought in its report, all the 
delegates knew what to expect, were familiar with the 
grievances from their own several states, and were satisfied 
when they found them mentioned in the report. But on 
one subject the delegates from Georgia went into oppo- 
sition ; slavery and the reference to its abolition must be 
left out, and it was left out. It is to be noted that the 
Declaration is a general statement of principles of repre- 
sentative government, on which the members had a vague 
unity of sentiment. This formulation of abstract principles 
of government provoked little debate in Congress. There 
was a brief debate, but it was not concerning the principles 
of the Declaration, but the expediency of issuing it at that 
time. That the united colonies should be free and inde- 
pendent every man in the Congress believed ; and in the pre- 
vailing atmosphere of liberal principles no delegate seriously 
disputed that all men are born free and equal, however much 
division of sentiment might be latent in the Congress on the 
meanino; of the words. 



1776] DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 335 

The Declaration created no offices, laid no taxes, appro- 
priated no moneys, and advocated the political ideas of no 
party. It was a grand, and as many believed, a philo- 
sophical statement of fundamental principles assumed to be 
self-evident and axiomatic; and there was little more oppo- 
sition to it than would now arise were the delegates to a 
convention of men interested in the advancement of science 
to draw up a statement affirming the doctrine of universal 
gravitation. To reject the Declaration would have been to 
deny the common opinions, not alone of the people of the 
United States, but of the foremost thinkers of the eight- 
eenth century, who were rapidly concluding that the prin- 
ciples advocated by the Declaration must be considered at 
last as settled. The report of Jefferson and his committee 
passed Congress, was issued to the world as the funda- 
mental notions of representative government, was received 
by the people with approval, and by the world at large as 
an intelligible summary of fundamental principles of free 
government. 

But not much harmony prevailed when the Articles of 
Confederation were brought in. They touched on the 
administration of government, and on the administration 
of government no two delegates agreed. The committee 
had found no precedent or model in any of the colonial 
or state governments. It was perhaps thought that to 
confederate on the basis of any particular state would be 
practically to antagonize the remaining twelve. The 
articles, therefore, exhibit the original powers of the dele- 
gates in constructing a government without a precedent. 
Even the most fundamental notion of English experience 
for a thousand years and of American experience for a cen- 
tury and a half — the division of government into three 
departments — was ignored. A form of government was 
devised which found none to admire it when first proposed, 
which won no friends during its troubled existence, which 
was accepted by the states without enthusiasm and ignored 
by them with impunity, which passed through every phase 
of neglect and contempt, and at last expired, without a suf- 
ficient representation of its adherents to send forth to the 
world a mortuary notice. On the 15th of November, 1777, 



236 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1778 

the Articles of Confederation, which for more than a year 
had been debated by Congress, at irregular intervals, were 
passed by that body, and sent to the state legislatures for 
adoption. Before the end of July, 1778, Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia 
adopted them ; New Jersey followed in November, Delaware 
in 1779, and Maryland in March, 1781. New Hampshire 
never adopted them. 

The plan of gov^ernment outlined by the articles was 
without precedent, and it is still without similitude in the 
governments of the w^orld ; yet it is necessary to understand 
its scheme in order to understand the causes w^hich led to 
the formation of the Constitution of the United States. 
The confederation was suggested by Greek models which 
had existed for brief periods among the Mediterranean 
cities; but it lacked that significance which occasional 
Greek conservatism imparted to those feeble unions. No 
government was ever modeled upon the confederation; 
the nearest approach being the Southern Confederacy of 
1861. 

Congress having submitted the Articles of Confederation 
and perpetual union between the states as a basis for a 
national government, seemed little aware of the feeble gov- 
ernment which it was attempting to set up. There were 
men in Congress who knew, as all the world now knows, 
that such a government was an anomaly and a bold fiction, 
and they have left on record their doubts of its eflficiency, 
which were formed at the time of its inception. During 
the five years of its journey through state legislatures, the 
plan was a constant confession of impotence and inadapta- 
bility to the needs of the country; but when first proposed 
it was quite confidently supposed by the majority of the 
delegates to Congress to be adapted to the welfare of the 
states. 

The fate of the articles emphasizes a principle in gov- 
ernment — that it is not safe in organizing a new frame of 
government to break with the past and to trust too much 
to mere experiment. The articles were a compact between 
the states, and the confederation was st>'led "The United 



1776-1 ySi] FEDERAL ORGANlZATIOiN 237 

States of America. " Each retained its sovereignty, free- 
dom, and independence, and every power not expressly 
delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. 
The states entered into a firm league of friendship with each 
other for their common defense and general welfare. The 
free inhabitants of each were entitled to all the privileges 
and immunities of free citizens in the different states. No 
state was to impose discriminating restrictions on the trade 
or commerce of another which were not imposed on its own 
citizens. No state was to tax the property of the United 
States. Fugitives from justice, meaning by that phrase 
criminals and fugitive slaves, were to be given up, wherever 
found, by the authorities of the state in which they were 
found, and full faith was to be given by every state to the 
records, acts, and judicial proceedings of any other. Con- 
gress was to be composed of at least two and not more than 
seven delegates from each state, appointed in whatever 
manner the legislature might determine. 

It was to meet yearly, and each state represented was 
to have one vote. No person could serve as a delegate 
for more than three years in any term of six. No state, 
without the consent of the United States in Congress, could 
send or receive any embassy, nor make a treaty with any 
power, nor lay any duty or impost which would interfere 
with any stipulations in any treaty entered into by the 
United States; nor could any state keep bodies of troops 
or vessels of war in time of peace, except its own militia ; 
nor fit out privateers, nor engage in war, without the con- 
sent of the United States. When land forces were raised 
by a state for the common defense, all ofificers of the rank 
of colonel and below it were to be appointed by its legis- 
lature. All common expenses were to be defrayed out of 
a common treasury, which was to be supplied by the legis- 
latures of the states in proportion to the value of private 
lands in each ; but the legislatures had the exclusive right 
of laying and collecting the taxes and the proportional 
amounts to be paid to the United States. The taxing 
power was carefully kept in the control of the lower house 
of the state legislatures. 

Congress had the sole and exclusive power t© declare war 



238 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776-1781 

and to make peace, but no treaty could impair the ri<^ht of 
a state to lay duties and imposts. Congress had power to 
send and to receive ambassadors; to establish rules for the 
disposition of captures and prizes made in war; to appoint 
final courts of appeal in cases of captures; to be the court 
of last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences, in 
certain cases, between two or more states; to regulate the 
value of all coin struck by the United States or by a state; 
to regulate trade with the Indian tribes, provided the legis- 
lative rights of every state within its own limits were not 
infringeci; to establish and regulate post-offices; to appoint 
all officers in the land forces of the United States, except- 
ing regimental officers; to appoint all naval officers; to make 
rules for the government of all these forces; to appoint a 
"committee of the states" to sit in the recess of Congress; 
to appoint its president ; to ascertain the necessary sums of 
money to be raised for the services of the United States, 
and to appropriate and to apply these sums for defraying 
the public expenses; to borrow money; to build and equip 
a navy; to agree upon the number of land forces required, 
and to make requisitions from each state for its quota, to be 
binding upon it. 

The consent of nine states in Congress was necessary to 
enable the United States to engage in war, tt) grant letters 
of marque or reprisal, to make treaties, to coin or regulate 
the value of money, to ascertain the sums necessary for 
public expense, to emit bills of credit, to borrow or to 
appropriate money, to create and equip a navy, to raise 
land forces, or to appoint a commander-in-chief. On all 
other measures, except a question of adjournment, a vote 
of the majority of the states was required. Each w^as to 
abide by the determination of the United States on all 
questions which by the terms of the articles were submitted 
to them ; the articles themselves were to be inviolably 
observed by every state, and the Union was to be per- 
petual. Nor could any alteration at any time be made in 
any of the articles unless such alterations were agreed to 
in Congress and afterward confirmed by the legislature of 
every state. 

As there were but thirteen votes in Congress when 



1776-1781] WEAKNESS OF THE LEAGUE 239 

every state was present, and the vote of nine was necessary 
on every essential measure of government, it followed in 
the administration of affairs that the vote of a few men, as 
that of one delegate in each of five states, could determine 
the fate of a proposed bill. The number of delegates from 
each state was not large, on account of the expense to the 
state of maintaining them ; and it often happened that for 
months a state would have but two in Congress, and often 
none at all. A few men, either absenting themselves or 
co-operating as obstructionists, could successfully oppose 
the most important measu^es at the most critical times. 

The confederation, as an effort toward a national gov- 
ernment, set at defiance all precedents of practical civil 
organization and administration. Executive, legislative, 
and judicial powers were confused, or, more correctly speak- 
ing, were wanting. The power which had given force to 
the general assemblies of the colonies — the power to lay 
taxes and to appropriate moneys — did not exist in the con- 
federation. It could not levy a tax, and the right to levy 
taxes and the exercise of that right are distinguishing marks 
of sovereign power: they are the rights which distinguish 
a government from an individual. 

The president of Congress was the speaker of that body, 
chosen from its own number, but no executive authority 
was put into his hands. The feeble judicial system was 
wholly impractical. Compared with any of the thirteen 
governments which were asked to adopt the articles, the 
confederation was only a committee of the states which any 
one of them might ignore with safety. Had the articles 
empowered Congress to levy and to collect taxes, to pass 
and to execute all laws necessary and proper for the public 
welfare, the confederation would be classed among the 
imperfect governments of the past. Constituted as it was, 
it cannot be called a model government. 

It lacked the essential elements of sound government. 
No supreme power had created it, nor had the supreme 
power of the people put it into operation. It might request, 
as it did request, the states to furnish their quotas of men 
and money, but it could not compel the weakest of the 
thirteen to furnish a penny or to send a man into the field. 



240 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [i 776-1 781 

It could not compel obedience, for it lacked that sanction 
which makes government a reality in the world. It could 
not act directly upon individuals; it operated, if at all, 
through the agency of civil corporations, the states. The 
confederation was only a league, or treaty, agreed to by 
the contracting parties, the states. It was a compact to 
which a state was amenable only to that degree and for that 
time which it might determine. There was no reference 
whatever in the articles to the idea of nationality; there 
was none whatever to the people of the United States as 
a national unit, a political entity, as the source of author- 
ity; there was no provision for national citizenship. Every 
American was first a citiz.en of his own state. He knew 
nothing of a distant national citizenship; it had not yet 
been defined. 

Of the states as parties, the articles spoke repeatedly; 
of the individuals who composed the states, they said noth- 
ing. In it the states alone were addressed; to them it 
turned for all supplies. It had no power to compel indi- 
viduals to minister to its wants. Nor had it power to pun- 
ish offenses against its own authority expressed in its 
requests. If the commander-in-chief of the army should 
commit treason and fall into the hands of the confederation. 
Congress had no power to try, much less to punish him. 
It knew nothing of the people, and the people knew noth- 
ing and ultimately cared nothing for it. Its delegates were 
not chosen by them, but were appointed by the state legis- 
latures, usually in joint ballot of both houses. If paid at 
all, they were paid by the states. The whole range of the 
confederation, in political or civil fields, was merely specu- 
lative and by sufferance of the states. Without qualif\'ing 
the description, the Congress of the confederation cannot 
be called even a committee of the states. If it was author- 
ized to borrow money, it had no ability to pay the debt ; 
if it could emit bills of credit, it could not be compelled, nor 
could it compel any one, to redeem them. Its attempts 
to perform the work of a real government were, therefore, 
largely futile. If it sought to legislate, it had no authority 
to execute its laws; if it sought to adjudicate a dispute, it 
had no power to enforce its decrees. 



1776-1781] WEAKNESS OF THE LEAGUE 241 

Thus the states, possessing all the powers of govern- 
ment, soon wholly ignored the confederation, their execu- 
tives, their legislatures, their courts discovering its weakness 
and defects. It was conceived wholly at that time of the 
conduct of the war when patriotism and popular enthusiasm 
would support, as they have often supported, a voluntary 
committee of citizens acting on behalf of the people for the 
success of fundamental principles of government. But as 
enthusiasm died away and bitter daily experiences made 
patriotism a costly sacrifice, it was found that the admin- 
istration, rather than the principles, of the government 
would decide its fate. This anomalous body, "the United 
States in Congress assembled," was the first effort toward 
an administration of the principles of the Declaration of 
1776. As in its formation it discarded political experience, 
so it met with the unhappy, but necessary, consequences 
of so serious a neglect. The feeblest state of the thirteen 
possessed civil authority; "the United States in Congress 
assembled" possessed little. 

Yet this shadow of a national government was not so 
impalpable, so visionary, so insignificant as a hasty analysis 
of it at this distance of time might tempt us to believe. 
With all its functional defects, it was to foreign powers the 
government of the new nation. It sent Franklin and Adams 
and Jefferson to foreign courts, and there borrowed large 
sums of money for carrying on the war. It made alliances, 
offensive and defensive, with the proudest nations of 
Europe. It persuaded "his most Christian majesty" to 
send both money and soldiers to aid the American cause. 
Nor was this persuasion made without the opposition of 
influential ministers who had the royal ear. Talleyrand 
tells us that he thought the French alliance with the United 
States a mistake, and both he and Turgot advised the king 
against it. This Congress of the confederation was despised 
at home by states that were not known diplomatically 
abroad. To Europe, and perhaps to Europe only, did this 
feeble Congress represent the latent nationality of the people 
of America. 

The war had continued five years before the articles 
were adopted by the states, and two years after their adop- 



242 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776-1 781 

tion the treaty of peace was made. In order to understand 
the critical condition of affairs during this time, it is neces- 
sary to glance at their administration, both by Congress 
and by the legislatures of the states. 

If the theory of the confederation seems defective upon 
a cursory examination of the articles, its defects and their 
consequences become more serious when the articles are 
subjected to the crucial test of practical administration. 
To the several states, as to the courts of Europe, the con- 
federation was a foreign government, and members of state 
legislatures repeatedly so described it. Every legislature 
viewed with grave suspicion any act passed by "the United 
States in Congress assembled." No living soul was re- 
sponsible to Congress save that small body of men whom it 
had sent to foreign courts. In the legislatures, suspicion 
of Congress turned into contempt. The system of repre- 
sentation in the articles ignored population and gave as 
much authority in the Congress to Rhode Island as to Vir- 
ginia, and Virginia at that time was as large as the New 
England states, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware com- 
bined. But this inequality in representation was not the 
chief defect in the articles. 

Congress could not by its own authority raise a revenue. 
It was less powerful than the assembly of any state for the 
rights of whose people the war was raging. If the assem- 
blies chose not to send a quota to Congress, it must do 
without money, or obtain it by borrowing. In 1776, buoyed 
up by popular enthusiasm for the Revolutionary cause, the 
Congress boldly "voted supplies" which the states were to 
furnish. But the states did not furnish them promptly. 
Two years later Congress "urged supplies," but the state 
legislatures failed to send them. Excuses were more numer- 
ous than the houses of assembly or their membership, but 
the chief excuse was the expense necessary to be met by 
the state for its own defense. A deeper reason may be found. 
The people were burdened by war taxes, which were far 
higher than any taxes known under the colonial regime. 
Business of all kinds was interrupted, and of many kinds 
wholly destroyed. To be doubly taxed, by state and by 
Congress, was an administration of affairs highly unpopular. 



1786] THE HARTFORD CIRCULAR 243 

When the year of grace 1780 had come, both Congress 
and the states had passed beyond any dependence on direct 
taxes and had begun to use their credit. We know that no 
problem in the practical administration of public affairs is 
more delicate or more important than the use of public 
credit. Gold and silver had disappeared from general cir- 
culation, and state legislatures and Congress began to issue 
a paper currency. 

On the nth of November of this year, the four New 
England states and New York sent delegates to a conven- 
tion at Hartford. Financial and commercial dangers 
thickening on every side were admonishing thoughtful men 
that the welfare of the nation depended upon the laying of 
some foundation for a safe system of finance, by providing 
taxes or duties which should produce a fixed and inalienable 
revenue to pay the interest on the funded public debt and 
make possible future loans. The attempt to determine the 
value of private lands had failed. It seemed, therefore, 
necessary that Congress should be empowered to apportion 
taxes among the states on the basis, not of land, but accord- 
ing to their number of inhabitants, both black and white. 

The Hartford convention of 1786 made a brief discus- 
sion of these grave propositions, and issued a circular letter 
to the states: "Our embarrassments arise from a defect in 
the present government of the United States. All govern- 
ments suppose the power of coercion ; this power, however, 
never did exist in the general government of the continent, 
or has never been exercised. Under these circumstances 
the resources and force of the government can never be 
properly united and drawn forth. The states, individually 
considered, while they endeavor to retain too much of their 
independence, may finally lose the whole. By the expul- 
sion of the enemy we may be emancipated from the tyranny 
of Great Britain ; we shall, however, be without a solid hope 
of peace and freedom, unless we are properly cemented 
among ourselves." But the wise opinions of the conven- 
tion, sent to Congress, to Washington, and to every state 
legislature, and though tending as they did to aid the 
sentiment for a more perfect union, scarcely colored the 
prevailing opinions of the day. Pennsylvania, New York, 



244 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1786 

and New Jersey substantially approved its proceedings, but 
no state alone, nor all the states together, at this time could 
have so changed public opinion throughout the country as 
to clothe Congress with adequate powers, unless by a reor- 
ganization of the government on a national scale. Few 
people at the time knew anything about the Hartford con- 
vention. Little concerning it can be found in the news- 
papers of the time, or in the records of the old Congress, 
or in those of the state legislatures. The administrative 
principles of government, which the Hartford circular em- 
phasized, were too subtle for the masses, but the conven- 
tion itself was evidence that thoughtful men in America 
had detected the essential and fatal weaknesses of the con- 
federation long before it was adopted by the states. It 
was the recognition of these weaknesses which led to the 
formation of a more perfect union ; but before we can under- 
stand the scope and nature of this great reform, it is 
necessary to possess a more complete knowledge of the 
administration of government under the confederation and 
of the causes which compelled its abandonment. 

The change from colonies to states was easily made. 
The people had long been accustomed to elect their assem- 
blies, and in Rhode Island and Connecticut to elect their 
governors. Elsewhere the governors had been appointed 
by the king. The judges were appointed by the governors. 
Before the second Continental Congress met, the revolution 
in Massachusetts had progressed so far that the province 
was already a state in fact, if not in name. It refused to 
acknowledge the authority of General Gage, yet it hesitated 
to organize a state government without the moral support 
of the whole country. It therefore asked Congress what 
to do, and that body, with proper caution, advised the prov- 
ince to organize a temporary government on the plan of 
its first charter, till King George should restore the old 
government. They acted on this advice, elected a governor, 
and practically organized a state government which, with 
few changes, has continued to the present time. Much the 
same thing was done in other colonies.* 

* For an account of the transition from colonies to states, see the 
Constitutional History of the American I'eople, 1776-1850, Vol. I, Chap- 
ter IV. 



1776-1781] FINANCES 245 

Before the Declaration of Independence was issued, 
every colony had declared itself a state, and all except 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had adopted 
written constitutions. Massachusetts adopted one in 1780 ; 
Connecticut and Rhode Island continued their charter gov- 
ernments, the one till 1818, the other till 1842. Now, each 
of these constitutions embodied the colonial government as 
it was in 1776. The principal change was in the executive. 
He was henceforth elected, and. except in New York and 
Massachusetts, by the assembly. He, with the consent of 
the assembly, usually the upper house, or senate, appointed 
the judges, so the people had the government to some extent 
in their own hands at last. At first Georgia and Pennsyl- 
vania had no upper house, but they soon added one. This 
upper house, known by various names, was something new. 
It was created as a check on the lower house. 

Some of the states were very large, but the power of 
a state consisted in its population and taxable wealth. 
The assembly had exclusive and ample power of taxation. 
The chief source of revenue was the land. To-day, one of 
the chief sources is corporations, such as railroad, steam- 
ship, canal, telegraph, and telephone companies. None of 
these existed in the eighteenth century. The burden of the 
support of government fell on the land or on persons. 
There was a poll-tax in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and 
Delaware, but it did not produce much. Taxes in early 
colonial days, when money was scarce, were payable in 
produce; for instance, in barrel -staves, hides, rum, or 
tobacco. The states at first collected their taxes in money, 
but early in the war produce was accepted. Many a 
farmer paid his taxes with corn, oats, beef, butter, hay, or 
salt. The collector would sometimes sell this produce in 
open market, or turn it over to the military authorities for 
the use of the army. 

The Congress of 1775 consisted of men chosen by the 
assemblies to meet in Philadelphia and to consult for the 
general welfare. They had no authority to make laws or 
to bind the states. But, as has already been shown, they 
became convinced, in the spring of 1776, that nothing short 
of independence was possible, l^ut independence meant 



246 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [i 776-1 781 

some kind of a union or league. Each state claimed to be 
free and independent, and this claim must be recognized in 
any union. When Congress elected the committee to draft 
a declaration of independence, it elected another to prepare 
articles of confederation. The two committees had very 
different tasks. The first was easy, the second difficult. 
There was all the difference between a statement of ideas 
and the organization of a government. Now, government 
is public business conducted by. authority ; it rests on the 
will of the people, and is supported by taxation. There was 
no provision for a tax in the Declaration of Independence. 

There were other difficulties. The states were unequal 
in size, wealth, and population, and some scheme must be 
devised to equalize the burden of a union, or it could not 
be formed. But the committee on a constitution, as the 
articles may be called, reported in July, 1776, having made 
free use of Franklin's plan of union, which he had laid 
before the Albany Congress in 1754, and which, in a 
modified form, he presented to Congress in 1775. He 
now was present as a member from Pennsylvania. His 
plan and one based on it, by John Dickinson, were duly 
considered, were laid before Congress, and discussed at 
various times for nearly a year and a half, when, on the 
17th of November, 1777, the articles as approved by 
Congress were sent to the assemblies for adoption. 

For three years, 1777- 1780, the articles were debated 
by the assemblies. It soon appeared that they would never 
be adopted unless in some way the states were willing to 
become more nearly equal one with another, not in popu- 
lation, but in area. The difficulty was ancient and great. 
New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland were as large then as 
now. They had no "western lands." All the others 
claimed immense areas beyond the mountains, and chiefly 
by their charters, which extended their boundaries from 
the Atlantic to the South Sea, which meant in sober lan- 
guage, after 1763, to the Mississippi River. The articles 
had no sooner come before the New Jersey legislature than 
several amendments were proposed, of which the most 
important required that all western lands claimed by other 
states should be ceded to Congress as the common land or 



1781] FINANCES 247 

public domain, to be used to pay the cost of the war and 
the debts of the United States. Maryland and Delaware 
insisted on the same modification. 

The substance of the argument for the cession was that 
the western lands, comprising practically the "Indian Coun- 
try," by the king's proclamation of 1763, had never belonged 
to England till ceded by France, at the conclusion of the 
French wars. Therefore they were "crown lands, " belonging 
to the states in common, and should be used for the bene- 
fit of all. Maryland firmly insisted on the cession, and 
refused to adopt the articles till the states claiming western 
lands would promise to cede them. At last, after three 
years of discussion, these states yielded. New York and 
Virginia agreed to cede, and Maryland instructed her dele- 
gates in Congress to sign the articles. This they did 
March i, 1781. The other states had already signed. 
The approval of Maryland put the articles into effect, and 
was celebrated by the thundering of cannon and ostenta- 
tious public ceremonies. The news was ofiicialh' given to 
the army and to foreign countries. On the following day, 
the Congress of the confederation began. It was the same 
Congress as before, but the thirteen states now were 
pledged to union. By the time the articles were adopted, 
the war was nearly over. During their discussion before 
the assemblies, public affairs had become more and more 
complicated and sadly mismanaged. It was hoped that 
under the articles this might be remedied. 

But the articles were remarkable for what they did not 
contain. They gave Congress no power to levy a tax, to 
regulate trade, or to enforce ordinances. They established 
no executive or judiciary', other than Congress. They 
made Congress entirely dependent on the assembly. They 
did not give Congress exclusive control of public finances. 
They confused the powers of government by making Con- 
gress the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. 
These and other defects were soon recognized. 

Though these were articles of union, the assemblies were 
the sources of all supplies to Congress. Long before the 
articles were adopted. Congress began the practice of ap- 
portioning what it needed among the states, on the basis 



24S THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1776-1785 

of population and wealth. The states had, therefore, two 
amounts to raise by taxation : the state tax and the tax for 
the quota to Congress. If a state should refuse to send its 
quota, as New Jersey did in 1785, Congress had no power 
to enforce payment. The states, therefore, possessed the 
two principal powers of government : the power to levy and 
to collet taxes, and the power to regulate trade. Both 
Congress and the states had the power to issue paper money, 
called "bills of credit." It followed that the United States 
had fourteen kinds of paper money from 1776 to 1789. 
One reason why Congress issued so much paper money, 
called "continental currency," or briefly, "continentals," 
was the neglect of the states to furnish their quotas. 

Though forbidden by English law to coin money, and 
strictly speaking, to issue paper money, the colonial legis- 
latures had issued much of it, but rarely had it been at par. 
It was called "proclamation money," because its value was 
so frequently regulated by law. When the war began, 
Congress promptly issued two million dollars in paper money 
and declared that the states would redeem it. This was in 
June, 1775. The congressional issues piled up fast. In 
1775-76-77 they aggregated fifty-five million five hundred 
thousand dollars. In 1778 there were fourteen issues, 
amounting to sixty-three million five hundred thousand 
dollars. During the first quarter of 1779, sixty-five million 
dollars were printed, and Congress attempted to borrow 
twenty million dollars, but no one would lend. The states 
began heavy issues in 1777, and continental money at once 
fell below state money, because the states could tax the 
people and redeem their issues at some price. Congress 
issued above one hundred and forty million dollars in 1779. 
Then its money fell so low that "not worth a continental" 
became a common phrase for worthlessness.* 

* In 1779 the value of papermoney was shown by a table of estimates, 
for supplies for the soldiers, presented to the New Jersey Assembly: 

Linen for shirts, per yard 140 s. 

Hose, per pair 120 s. 

Shoes, per pair 120 s. 

Blue cloth for coats, per yard 400 s. 

Scarlet facing, per yard 600 s. 

And in 1780 the following^ prices: 

Flour, per cwt $225 00 



1781-1787] VIRGINIA LEADS 249 

All this meant that a government cannot give value to 
a piece of paper merely by calling it money. But the 
assemblies thought differently, and continued to print great 
quantities of bills of credit, from 1781 to 1787. People all 
over the country were infatuated with the idea that more 
cheap money was wanted. Finally the merchants refused 
to take it. In 1786, the Massachusetts legislature refused 
to issue more paper. Rhode Island passed a law to com- 
pel people to take bills of credit. The paper money so fell 
in value that persons in debt took advantage of the fall to 
pay their creditors. A curious instance of this kind occurred 
in Burlington County, New Jersey. Early during the war, 
a woman sold a farm, to be paid for in installments. The 
purchaser made no payments for several years, and then 
paid all in paper money. The good lady went to purchase 
a calico dress with the proceeds, and gave the whole price 
of her farm for the dress. In Massachusetts at this time, 
1786-87, a civil war broke out, led by one Daniel Shays, 
who, with his followers, took arms to compel the state not 
to enforce the collection of debts. 

It is evident, therefore, that all through the Revolution- 
ary War the Americans were suffering from a bad financial 
system. Levi Woodbury, a distinguished Secretary of the 
Treasury,* estimated in later years that the depreciation 
of continental money cost the people two hundred million 
dollars. The loss from depreciation of state issues was 
probably equally as great. 

Congress had no power to regulate trade. It joined 
with the assemblies in many attempts to regulate prices, 
but the "valuation laws" failed to prevent speculation or to 

Fall fatted beef, per cwt *•$ 325 00 

Salt pork, per bbl. 200 lbs 1,100 00 

Indian corn, per bu -. 37 50 

Oats, per bu 25 00 

Hay, per ton 750 00 

Salt, per bu 150 00 

In 1781, in Philadelphia: 

Boots 600 00 

Handkerchiefs 100 00 

Chintz 15000 

Skein of silk 10 00 

Calico, per yard 85 00 

*i834-i84i. 



250 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1 781-1787 

maintain the paper money at a fixed rate. Each state made 
its own trade laws, and discriminated against all the others. 
A coaster from Boston had to pay one set of duties at 
Philadelphia and another at Charleston. Each state had 
in effect a protective tariff. Of course this made havoc 
with trade. States with ports had a natural advantage 
over states without them. Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, South 
Carolina, and Georgia had fine harbors. New Hampshire, 
New Jersey, North Carolina were not so well supplied. 
Certainly the time would soon come when state discrimi- 
nations in trade laws would break up the Union. The 
leading men in the country saw this, and sought to remedy 
it by giving Congress power to regulate trade, and thus to 
secure a uniform system for the country. 

As early as February, 1781, a month before the articles 
were ratified, Congress tried to persuade the states to allow 
it to levy a five per cent tax on imports during the war in 
order to pay the debts of the United States; another plan, 
in 1783, was for the states to allow duties to be levied by 
Congress for twenty-five years, to be collected by state 
collectors; another plan, in 1784, proposed fifteen years; 
but the states would not consent. At one time twelve 
consented, but thirteen were necessary, according to the 
articles. Rhode Island refused. 

On the 2 1st of January, 1786, Virginia took the lead in 
a movement that at last fully corrected the evil. On that 
day, through the influence of James Madison, a member of 
its house of delegates, it decided to appoint commissioners 
to meet those from other states and to "take into considera- 
tion the trade of the United States." Twelve commissioners 
from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and 
Virginia met at Annapolis, September 11, 1786. Among them 
were Alexander Hamilton and Madison. The whole ques- 
tion was discussed, and it was decided that as all the states 
were concerned, all should be asked to send delegates to an- 
other convention, to meet at Philadelphia on the first Mon- 
day of May, 1787, to advise such further provisions as should 
appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the 
federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union. 



1781] SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 251 

During the years 1786, 1787, and 1788, Congress sunk 
in public estimation, and toward the last rarely had a 
quorum. The people knew that it possessed no authority. 
Many of the ablest men in the country preferred service 
in the state governments to membership in Congress. At 
last it passed away, when our present government began. 
So much has been said of the defects and weaknesses of 
the old Congress and that of the confederation, it is no 
more than just to state the conspicuous services of these 
bodies. 

The Stamp Act Congress assembled at New York, 
October 5-25, 1765. It adopted a declaration of rights, 
which clearly set forth the colonial cause. 

The first Continental Congress met in Carpenters' Hall, 
Philadelphia, September 5 -October 26, 1774. It issued 
four addresses, a declaration of rights, and made a most 
important non-importation agreement, to "encourage fru- 
gality, economy, and industry, and to promote agriculture, 
arts, and the manufactures of this country." 

The second Continental Congress met in the old State 
House at Philadelphia, May 10, 1775, and continued by 
state elections till the Articles of Confederation went into 
effect, March 2, 1781. 

It issued the Declaration of Independence. 

It adopted the Articles of Confederation. 

It made a treaty with France and established friendly 
relations with Holland, Spain, and Russia. 

It sent out foreign ministers, of whom the greatest were 
Dr. Franklin and John Adams. 

It chose Washington commander-in-chief. 

It carried on the war to a successful end. 

The Congress of the confederation met in many places, 
but chiefly in New York, from March 2, 1781, till its dis- 
solution, November 22, 1788, though its existence did 
not cease, under the acts for inaugurating the new govern- 
ment, till March 3, 1789. 

It negotiated the treaty of peace with Great Britain, 
September 3, 1783. 

It made treaties with the Netherlands (1782), Sweden 
(1783), Prussia (1785}, and Morocco (1787). 



252 I'HE LEAGUE OF STATES [1781 

It established our system of decimal currency and the 
weight, fineness, and ratio of our gold and silver coins. 

It organized the territory northwest of the Ohio River 
by the ordinance of 1787. 

It adopted our system of public surveys and provided 
for the survey and sale of the public domain. 

The firmness of Maryland caused the states claiming 
"western lands" to surrender them to Congress for the use 
of the United States. This was the beginning of the pub- 
lic domain. New York ceded the "triangle"* (also claimed 
by Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia) March i, 
1 78 1. Between that date and the close of 1788, Virginia 
ceded all her claim lying in the present states of Pennsyl- 
vania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. On the 19th of April, 

1785, Massachusetts ceded her claims in the present states 
of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In September, 

1786, and May, 1800, Connecticut ceded her lands lying 
in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. South Caro- 
lina, in August, 1787, conveyed her claims to lands lying 
in the present states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. 
North Carolina delayed her cession till February 25, 179O, 
and Georgia did ndt complete hers till 1802. 

These vast and generous grants to the general govern- 
ment comprised about one-half of the country. They placed 
to the credit of the United States an area, clear of prior 
claims, equal to seven states of the size of New York. The 
Congress, like everybody else in America at this time, 
thought that the western country would soon fill up with 
settlers. It was in confident anticipation of great land sales 
that Congress issued so much paper money. The public 
domain was a sort of public security. At all events. Con- 
gress practically mortgaged it many times over by its paper 
issues. Connecticut reserved a large tract along Lake Erie, 
known for a time as New Connecticut, and still called the 
Western Reserve. Over this, Connecticut had jurisdiction 
until 1800. Virginia reserved two tracts, one between the 
Miami and Scioto rivers, on the Ohio, for her Revolutionar)' 
soldiers: and another of one hundred ami fifty thousand 
acres, near Kaskaskia, for George Rogers Clarke and the 

* In reiiiisvlvania. 



1787] LAND CESSIONS 253 

officers and soldiers of his regiment. The cession from 
North Carolina, comprising the present state of Tennessee, 
was practically already covered by land warrants granted 
to the North Carolina troops. 

As soon as these cessions were negotiated, innumerable 
"land companies" and "population companies" started up, 
and petitioned Congress to make sales of land. As the 
west could be reached most easily and safely by water, the 
companies bought land along the Ohio. Congress began 
to sell the land in large tracts in 1787. 

The two largest purchasers were the Scioto Company and 
the Ohio Land Company. The intention of these was to 
resell the land in small holdings to immigrants, and make a 
fortune. The congressional sales were about forty cents 
an acre, in tracts of from one to four million acres. The 
Ohio Company originated in Massachusetts, made its pur- 
chase October 27, 1787, of one million five hundred thou- 
sand acres (within the present counties of Washington, 
Athens, Meigs, and Gallia) and reserved two townships for 
the endowment of a college, now the Ohio University, and 
set apart every sixteenth section for the use of free public 
schools. General Rufus Putnam was president. Early in 
the winter the pioneers started from Massachusetts for the 
"west." In the middle of February they reached the 
Youghiogheny, where a boat of fifty tons' burden w-as built 
and called the Mayflower. It was as large as the cara- 
vel that brought Columbus to America. The boat was 
made bullet-proof. On the 2d of April, the pioneers started 
down the river, entered the Monongahela, and thence down 
the Ohio, arriving at the mouth of the Muskingum on the 
7th. There they made the first permanent settlement in 
Ohio, and began the development of the Northwest Terri- 
tory. They were New England men, veterans of the war, 
and they brought New England ideas with them. 

The demand for lands in the Ohio country stirred Con- 
gress to provide for the government of the vast domain 
which the states had given it. On the 13th of July, 1787, 
it passed an ordinance for the government of the territory 
of the United States northwest of the river Ohio. The new 
government should consist of a governor, a secretary, and 



254 THE LEAGUE OF STATES [1790 

three judges till there should be five thousand free white 
men in the territory of full age. Then an assembly should 
be chosen, consisting of one representative for every five 
hundred free male inhabitants, till the assembly consisted 
of twenty-five members. The assembly nominated ten per- 
sons, from whom the Congress chose five to serve as a legis- 
lative council. A delegate to Congress was chosen by joint 
ballot of the council and assembly. He could debate, but 
not vote. All territorial laws were to be approved by Con- 
gress. 

Not less than three nor more than five states could be 
formed out of the territory, each to be admitted to the 
Union as soon as it should have sixty thousand free inhab- 
itants. "Schools and the means of education shall forever 
be encouraged," ran another provision; but one of greatest 
moment was the last: "There shall neither be slavery nor 
involuntary servitude in the territory otherwise than in pun- 
ishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly 
convicted," but all fugitive slaves should be caught and 
returned to their owners. 

Just twenty-seven days after this ordinance was passed. 
Congress accepted the South Carolina cession, and on April 
2, 1790, accepted the cession from North Carolina. The 
North Carolina deed expressly declared that the land was 
ceded on condition that Congress should never make any 
regulation tending to emancipate slaves, and that the laws 
of North Carolina should continue in force in the territory 
until repealed by its legislature. By these laws, it became 
slave territory. Congress, on the 26th of May, 1790, 
created the territory south of the Ohio River subject to the 
Carolina conditions. Thus the Ohio River became the 
dividing-line between free soil and slave soil. It will be 
noticed that the Southwest Territory was created by the first 
Congress under the Constitution. Meanwhile, the federal 
convention had assembled in Philadelphia. 



CHAPTER XVII 

A MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY 
1787 

Written constitutions are the chief contribution to the 
science of government in modern times, and it may be said 
that they originated in America. A written constitution 
may embody a people's civil institutions, or these may be 
unwritten and be expressed in customs, or be partly writ- 
ten and be expressed in customs and statutes. The chief 
purpose of a written constitution is to insure clearness and 
accuracy in laying down the outline of a political system, 
and to establish a known method of administering public 
business. It has long been customary to describe constitu- 
tional government as consisting of three departments, the 
legislative, the executive, and the judiciary, but it affords 
a more perfect understanding of civil society if these so- 
called departments are conceived as civil functions rather 
than as separate depositaries of portions of sovereignty. 
The administration of government furnishes sufificient proof 
that the true division is functional and not merely arbitrary 
and departmental. 

The demonstration was anticipated, moreover, in phi- 
losophy, and was made in the eighteenth century by Mon- 
tesquieu in his Spirit of Laws. As in viewing a magnificent 
public building we are quite forgetful of the quarry from 
whence the stones were hewn, so in contemplating the civil 
institutions of a people we are forgetful of their origin. 
It would not be just to attribute to Montesquieu the author- 
ship of our political institutions, but it is a matter of his- 
tory that many of their important characteristics were 
first anticipated by him, and chief of these, the threefold 
division of civil functions. The influence of his work, as 
we have seen, was almost paramount in this country at 
the time when the colonies transformed themselves into 

^55 



256 MORE PERFECT UiNlOiN iNECESSARY [1787 

states. His comprehension of the principles of government 
immediately contributory to the formation of the American 
constitutions was destined, like all such discoveries, to be- 
come the property of the general mind and gradually to 
pass from exclusive association with the name of the 
discoverer. 

During the colonial period, the three functions of gov- 
ernment were obscure, for neither had as yet been worked 
out with sufificient clearness to make possible a written con- 
stitution. Of this truth, the eighteenth-century constitutions 
themselves are examples. Neither one of the departments 
(as they were then, and as they are now, commonly called) 
was separated from either of the others, and the makers of 
these constitutions seemed to realize that the separation 
was practically impossible; so that, as in the first constitu- 
tion of Kentucky, it was declared that those who exercised 
the power properly belonging to one of these departments 
should not exercise any power properly belonging to either 
of the others, except in instances expressly permitted. The 
fourth function of government, the administrative, was not 
yet recognized to be a separate function, but was merged 
during the eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth 
centuries with the other three. 

The English colonies in America, like the French and 
the Spanish, were instituted immediately under royal 
authority and through the exercise of the war power. 
Theoretically, the king was the fountain of all grants and 
commissions, from which legislative assemblies sprang into 
existence later. The theory of citizenship then was the 
reverse of what it is now ; it was a privilege, not a right ; 
the effect of a grant, not a franchise under an original title. 
Thus all the colonial assemblies were branches from the 
English executive, and this doctrine was upheld by the 
Court of King's Bench.* The origin of the American leg- 
islative was analogous with that of Parliament, and because 
of this fact many writers have continued to describe Ameri- 
can institutions as mere copies of the English model. In 
history, no course is more likely to land us in error than to 
reason wholly from analogy; nor is any course easier to fol- 

* Campbell 7>s. Hall, 1774; Culper, 204. 



1787] . WRITTEN CONSTITUTIONS 257 

low. The many plans* for colonial union which emanated 
from English sources during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, disclosed the essential character of the English 
government. They rested primarily upon military nations. 

A government founded upon such a basis would natu- 
rally find its chief civil formula in the executive, whence the 
colonial history of America is largely of the English execu- 
tive, represented by the colonial governors, who constantly 
strove to keep colonial life on a military basis. But this 
was not the limit of effort. Royal grants and commissions 
permitted colonial assemblies, and with their appearance the 
limitation of executive power began. As yet, however, 
the executive dominated the judiciary, either by exercising 
the judicial function itself, or by dividing it with judges 
whom he appointed, and usually controlled. It followed, 
therefore, that as long as the English executive continued in 
America, the judiciary would be an arm of the executive, and 
the struggle for supremacy, or, to put it in other words, the 
evolution of the functions of government in American democ- 
racy, would continue to be a conflict between the legislative 
on the one side and the executive and judiciary on the other. 

Perhaps it might be expected, previous to experience, 
that in this contest the executive and the judiciary would 
win ; but there were economic forces, as yet obscure or 
unrecognized, which contributed to the triumph of the 
legislative. The power of this economic auxiliary was soon 
evident, as in the enactment of colonial laws, in the estab- 
lishment of colonial precedents and customs, and in the 
gradual, though comparatively speedy, growth of American 
interests as distinct from English. This process of political 
identification compelled a definition of the relations between 
a colonial assembly and a royal charter; for under the charter 
the assemblies had sprung into existence, and had enacted 
laws which, in some instances, conflicted with the laws and 
customs of England. A typical case arose in Connecticut 
in 1 7 17, and was settled in privy council ten years later. f 

* For these plans see Carson's One Hundredth Anniversary of the 
Constitution, Vol. II. 

tWinthrop vs. Lechmere, 1727-28; 4 Connecticut Historical Society 
Collections, 94. 



358 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1787 

The case finally resulted, after this long period of legal 
incubation, in declaring null and void an act of the Con- 
necticut Assembly of May, 1726, and also an order of the 
superior court of Connecticut, made in September follow- 
ing, on the ground that they conflicted with the implied 
limitations of the charter of the colony. The decision 
meant merely that the acts of the court and of the legisla- 
ture conflicted with the will of the crown and therefore 
all, as we would now say, were unconstitutional. 

It may safely be said that, throughout the colonial 
period, any law enacted in America which conflicted with 
the will of the crown, if brought before an English court, 
or the privy council, would be abrogated. In other words, 
down to 1776, the final test of the constitutionality of a 
civil act in all the English colonies except in two* was the 
will of the executive. For the reason that sovereignty then 
resided solely in the crown, the decision was not made, 
as judicial decisions are now made in this country, after an 
adequate examination of the powers granted to the legisla- 
ture. The American conception of government is that 
sovereignty resides in the people; the Revolution of 1776 
was the transition from one idea to the other. 

After the French and Indian war, expostulation was 
made against the English administration on the ground 
that the rights of the Americans as Englishmen were in 
danger, and later, that they had been violated. But this 
ground was soon abandoned for the larger claim, that the 
violation was not merely of the rights of Englishmen, but 
of the rights of man, to which the Americans claimed title. 
James Otis and his associates advanced the new claim at 
the time when the writs of assistance were examined. The 
leaders of political thought in America put their cause in an 
entirely new phase, which was typified in the resolutions 
of the Suffolk convention, f 

To establish a legal foundation for the doctrine of 
natural rights would be the political triumph of the Rcvo- 

* Except in Rhode Island and Connecticut, charter colonies, and in 
Pennsylvania and Maryland, proprietary colonies; yet in either of these, 
in a test case, the crown was likely to prevail. 

tjournals of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, 1774-75. 



1787] NATURAL RIGHTS 259 

lution. It was established against odds, for there was no 
court in the British Empire to which Otis and his associ- 
ation could appeal with any hope of a favorable decision. 
The best case which they could expect to make out was 
that the writs were against natural equity; and that they 
contravened all the established principles of the common 
law of England. The difificulty was the more serious because 
the constitution of England was unwritten. Unless it could 
be proved by the common law that the writs of assistance 
were contrary to the customs of the realm, there was little 
hope that the Americans would win their case without an 
appeal to arms. In New England, the writs were attacked 
as contrary to the will of God, because they so manifestly 
violated the rights of men. It may well be questioned, 
however, whether Otis and his associates realized that the 
principles for which they were contending involved the 
whole question of representative government, and particu- 
lary the function of the judiciary. But from the day when 
Otis attacked the writs unto the present time there was to 
evolve a more perfect definition of the means of determin- 
ing the constitutionality of a law.* 

Eleven of the thirteen colonies emerged from the Revo- 
lution with written constitutions, and in Connecticut and 
Rhode Island the old charters, long administered as con- 
stitutions, were continued. These written constitutions 
were novel results of a war. They were the first of their 
kind. There is no doubt that their remarkable character- 
istic is the attempt in them all, more or less successful, to 
differentiate the functions of government and to recognize 
these as coequal. Most -emarkable was the entire change 
of political basis from royal to popular sovereignty, but in 
the transformation the legislative suffered Httle change. 
It had long been developing into the nucleus of government 
in the state, and throughout the eighteenth century it was 
suffered to remain so. Subordinate to it were the execu- 
tive and the judiciary, yet the subordination was mechanical 
and conventional, rather than functional. By the eight- 

*See the note to Paxton's case of the writ of assistance, 1761; in 
Quincy's Reports, Appendix, 520; also Thayer's Cases on Constitutional 
Law, Part I, pp. 48-55. 



26o MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1787 

ccnth century state constitutions,* the executive and the 
legislative, were the nominators of the judiciary, which, 
however, once created was to stand in equal rank with the 
other two. Yet the judiciary found itself in a novel posi- 
tion. For the first time in history it was separately func- 
tioned and acknowledged to possess distinctive powers, 
which, more or less clear in the state instruments, was made 
clearer in the national, whose definition of judicial func- 
tions is positive and general, the Constitution providing that 
all legislative power, without exception, granted to the gov- 
ernment of the United States shall be vested in Congress; 
that all executive power, without exception, shall be vested 
in the President, and that the judicial power, without excep- 
tion, shall be vested in one supreme court and in such 
inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain 
and establish. 

If the eighteenth-century constitutions, including that 
of the nation, be compared with those of the states made 
after 1870, which marks the time of the adoption of the 
Fifteenth Amendment, a remarkable difTerence will be 
observed. In the earlier period, the judiciary was appoint- 
ive, and dependent for its creation upon the executive and 
the legislative ; in the latter, it was created directly by the 
electors. The change is suggestive of that rearrangement 
of civil functions which even colonial experience had dic- 
tated. In the eighteenth century, the judiciary was associ- 
ated in the public mind with the executive; in our day, it 
is not associated with either the executive or the legislative, 
but is recogni/.ed to be an independent function or depart- 
ment in government. In the eighteenth century, democracy 
had been only so far developed as to make the judiciary to 
some extent responsible to the electors by associating the 
legislative with the executive in judicial appointments; in 
our own times, the independence of the judiciary is secured, 
or is sought to be secured, by making its creation a direct 
act of the electors. 

Probably if the Constitution of the United States were 
to be revised, or a new national Constitution were to be 

* Foran account of these constitutions, see the Constitutional History 
of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, Ci. 3 and 4. 



1782] THE CIVIL ESTATE 261 

adopted, the judicial power of the United States would be 
vested in courts whose judges would be elected directly 
by the people.* Passing by the question of the relative 
merits of the appointive and the elective system for the 
judiciary, it is to be observed that the constitutional changes 
made by the commonwealths in the organization of their 
courts of law consist essentially in defining the judiciary 
as an original and distinct function of government. This 
integrity and identification has been wrought out in a large 
measure by the judiciary itself, which from the time 
when the first state constitutions were formed, and the 
courts organized under them, has defined its own jurisdic- 
tion. Its decisions have contributed to that independence, 
conservatism, and influence which the law courts hold in 
the country at the present time. Of course, in working 
out its own jurisdiction, the judiciary has all along been 
brought into conflict with the legislative, and frequently 
with the executive. 

The gradual definition of judicial jurisdiction has not 
been limited to the exercise of the power to settle disputes 
arising among the people in their every-day relations. The 
jurisdiction of the courts has been determined quite as much 
by their definition of the powers of the separate houses, of 
the houses as a joint legislative body of the executive, and 
of the executive and legislative conjointly. Thus as early 
as 1782,1 in the court of appeals of Virginia, Chancellor 
Wythe, after deriving the jurisdiction of the court from the 
act by which it was constituted, entered into an examina- 
tion of the structure of the government of the common- 
wealth, defining the function of the legislature as a body 
having two branches. All laws must originate in the house 
of delegates and be approved or rejected by the senate. 
In the same case, Pendleton defined the chief function of 
the governor and the council, and in doing so set forth the 
functions of the judiciary the more clearly. The case was 
among the earliest in which a constitutional question was 

*For an account of the change from an appointive to an elective 
judiciary, see the author's Constitutional History of the American People, 
1776-1850, Vol. II, index, the Courts, the Judiciary. 

tCommotiwealth vs. Caton et al.; 4 Call, 5. 



262 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1786 

settled in an American commonwealth, and derives its im- 
portance from the position which the judiciary then took 
in claiming the right to determine the constitutional author- 
ity of the other branches of the government. To us the 
case may seem trite, if not unimportant, but at so early a 
period in our history it was an epoch-making decision, for 
until that time the right of a court to set aside an act of 
the legislature as unconstitutional had scarcely been exer- 
cised, as it had scarcely been thought of. 

The people of the United States had not yet sufficient!}- 
emerged from the shadows of colonialism to be able to see 
the bearings of their own political institutions. Two years 
later, a case arose in the city of New York* involving the 
authority of the treaty of 1783, the first case in our annals 
which laid down the doctrine of the paramount authority 
of a treaty; and the court was clearly of opinion "that no 
state in this Union can alter or abridge in a single point the 
federal articles or a treaty," a decision anticipatory of three 
provisions in the Constitution of the United States. f The 
importance of this decision in the evolution of judicial 
authority is obvious when it is remembered that if the 
decision was sustained by public opinion, it at once rele- 
gated the several states and the state constitutions to a sub- 
ordinate place, making the Articles of Confederation, for 
the time being the national Constitution, and the treaties 
of the United States, the supreme law of the land. Again, 
in 1786, the function of the judiciary was more clearly 
defined and its jurisdiction applied for the first time in pro- 
nouncing a state law unconstitutional. 

The case arose in Rhode Island^; out of one of the for- 
cing acts of that commonwealth to compel the circulation of 
paper money and the exchange of merchandise and other 
property for it. This commonwealth, unlike the others, 
except Connecticut, had no written constitution; yet its 
superior court did not hesitate to pronounce that the act 

* Rutgers vs. Waddington; Mayor's court, City of New York, August 
27. 1784. 

tArt. 1. Sec. 10, CI. i; Art. Ill, Sec. 2, CI. i; Art. YI, CI. 2. 

JTrevett ts. Weeden, 1786; Superior Court of Judicature of Rhode 
Island; 2 Chandler's Criminal Trials, 269. 






1787] THE FORCING ACTS 263 

involved in the case denied the right of trial by jury, and 
therefore was unconstitutional and void, by which decision 
not only was the character of the act defined, but also the 
jurisdiction of the court. Many in the legislature, and many 
more outside of it, construed the court to be a mere creature 
of the legislature, possessing no authority whatever to 
declare an act of the legislature void. At a time when 
public sentiment imputed almost absolute powers to the 
legislature, and construed the executive and judiciary as 
subordinate or merely accessory to the legislature, this 
Rhode Island decision stands among the great judicial 
events of the eighteenth century in America, and one pre- 
liminary to the ultimate common acceptation of the right 
of the judiciary to pass upon an act of the legislature. For 
all practical purposes the charter of Rhode Island was the 
constitution of the state, and the principles of the charter 
were essentially the principles of a state constitution. 

The causes that led to the formation and adoption of 
the national Constitution were economic and largely finan- 
cial in character. On that May morning when the federal 
convention assembled in the old State House in Philadel- 
phia for the purpose of adapting the Articles of Confeder- 
ation "to meet the exigencies of the Union," the dual 
system of government, which for twelve years had been one 
of the chief anxieties of American statesmen, displayed, as 
it never had before, such discordant relations between 
Congress and the assemblies as at that time existed between 
the East India Company, and the native princes of India: 
Congress and the princes exercised the forms, the assem- 
blies and the company the authority of government. Until 
the treaty at Versailles, Congress was a revolutionary body, 
but for over a century and a half the assemblies had been 
a constituent part of the civil organization of English 
America. Many efforts toward colonial federation had 
been made during this time. At least thirteen propositions 
had attained publicity. The first, that of 1643, had united 
a portion of New England for forty years; the last, pro- 
posed at Albany, in 1754, by Dr. Franklin, preserved the 
best elements of its prototypes, and contained precedents 
of several provisions in the national Constitution. The 



364 MORE PERl'ECr UNION NECESSARY [1787 

Articles of Confederation were closely modeled after the 
Albany form, and under them, by the issues of war, the 
people of the United States "assumed among the nations 
of the earth the place which the laws of nature and of 
nature's God entitled them." But the articles were no 
sooner adopted than their impotence became evident. 

The committees to report the articles and to bring in a 
draft of a Declaration of Independence were chosen on the 
same day. The reports of the two committees met a differ- 
ent fate. The Declaration was quickly and unanimously 
adopted. The articles were debated a year in Congress 
before adoption, and were debated nearly five years by the 
assemblies. Meantime, the country had outgrown them. 
Seven states moved amendments early in 1781. New Jer- 
sey proposed to vest in Congress the exclusive power of 
regulating trade, domestic and foreign ; of collecting duties 
for the general welfare, and of selling the western or crown 
lands for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the war. 
All these powers were essential to sovereignty, but through- 
out its existence the confederation lacked these means and 
rights, most of which were exercised by the separate states. 
Congress was, essentially, a continental cabinet to the 
assemblies, a council of state, a common agent. This and 
no more. All through the weary years of war, and the even 
more critical years of peace that followed. Congress ran a 
continental campaign. At first, popular enthusiasm was 
the sanction to its acts, but long before the war was over 
enthusiasm was dying away, and the November days of 
doubt and selfishness and jealous rivalries chilled the spirit 
of patriotism, hindered the growth of union, and filled the 
land with that cold, gray light of indifference which is more 
deadly than treason. But the assemblies suffered little 
during these days of despondency. Their claims to sover- 
eignty were not diminished; their assumption of power, 
not checked. They were the government of the American 
people. 

There can be no substitute for the power in government 
to serve legal processes upon individuals. This power the 
states possessed exclusively. Congress reached the indi- 
vidual, if at all, through the authority of the state. Thus 



1787] ON THE WAY TO UNION 265 

the legislatures, the governors, and the judges of the thir- 
teen states were the rulers in America from the time of the 
revolt against George III. till the inauguration of George 
Washington. With these state governments, the Congress 
of the confederation seldom had as great an influence as had 
the Rajah of Benares with the governor-general of Calcutta 
during those dark days of pride and strife in the early his- 
tory of the East India Company. With state authorities. 
Congress for twelve years kept up a ceaseless correspond- 
ence, through committees and heads of departments. The 
committees were timorous, the governors jealous, the assem- 
blies often unfriendly. 

Under the articles, executive functions which we are 
accustomed to see performed by a cabinet officer or a relay 
of clerks were performed, during almost the entire period 
of the confederation, by committees. John Adams has left 
on record energetic complaints that "putting the treasury 
in commission violated every principle of finance." The 
committees under the articles should not be confused, in 
function, origin, powers, or constituent relations, with the 
committees of the Senate and the House, which for over a 
century have largely controlled American politics. Iden- 
tity in name here signifies functions and powers almost 
wholly unlike. The world to-day is largely under control 
of the democratic idea, which in its parliamentary aspects 
is government by committees. But under the articles, the 
consent of nine states was necessary for the adoption of any 
measure of continental importance, and could with greatest 
difficulty be obtained. 

As public enthusiasm for Congress died away — and with 
it ceased the chief sanction for congresssional acts — the 
assent of nine states was an event of ever less frequent 
occurrence. Thus Congress was left to talk freely, to vote 
impotently, and to receive slight attention, for the states 
were neglecting or refusing to collect their several quotas of 
money for the common treasury, or delayed collection so 
long that the credit of the country, both at home and 
abroad, was seriously impaired. After 1783, only a few of 
the ablest men were in Congress. Only wealthy citizens 
like Franklin or Adams could accept diplomatic service, 



266 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1787 

only citizens of property could be chosen to office at home. 
But the greater attraction was service in the state. There 
both honor and authority awakened ambition. But in the 
states, public office was beyond the reach of the poor man. 
The governor of Massachusetts must possess a freehold 
estate worth a thousand pounds, and the governor of South 
Carolina one worth ten thousand. The voter in Pennsyl- 
vania was a tax-payer, but a member of assembly, a privy 
councilor, a judge of the superior court, must own an 
estate valued at least at five hundred pounds. The higher 
the office, the greater the amount of property required. 
A judge of the supreme court, in any state, was appointed 
by the governor quite as much for his ability to support the 
dignity as to perform the duties of the bench. 

The possession of real property was a qualification not 
always limited to office-holders. In most of the states, the 
poor man could not vote. In New York, a man must be 
worth a hundred pounds in land, free of debt, would he 
vote for state senator; in the Carolinas, he must own fifty 
acres in order to vote for any candidate. The white adult 
male population of the entire country was not half a million 
souls, and of these the number "duly qualified to be elec- 
tors," did not exceed one hundred and fifty thousand. It 
almost startles us to discover that at the time when the 
Fathers were in office and the foundations of our govern- 
ment were laid, when the rights of man were proclaimed 
from the house-tops, and the lovers of liberty had won 
American independence, the voters of America comprised 
less than one-twentieth of the whole population.* 

The long dispute between Parliament and the colonists 
was very complex in character. It contained political, 
religious, and commercial elements. There is no doubt 
that in the eighteenth, as in the nineteenth century, indus- 
trial difficulties took political form. They cannot easily 
take any other. Commercial equity is ever sought through 
legislation, and legislation that follows long agitation. So 
general is this political strife that its industrial purpose is 

♦For a detailed account of the qualifications of voters, legislators, 
and governors, from 1776 to 1800, see the author's Constitutional History 
of the American People, Vol. I, Chapter III. 



1787J PAPER MONEY 267 

often lost to view. The literature of the American Revo- 
lution presents, at first reading, the strong points of the polit- 
ical situation. The rights demanded are of persons, rather 
than of things. Trade and commerce give place to politi- 
cal philosophy, declarations of rights, acts of Congress and 
of assembly, and the bewildering productions of pamphlet- 
eers. Forms of government attract more attention than 
food and clothing. Farmers forsake the furrow for the 
platform in order to trumpet the rights of man. Thirteen 
colonies, usually sedate, habitually law-abiding, and isolated 
from the capitals of the world, are suddenly stirred to nullify 
English legislation, to revolt, and to declare their indepen- 
dence. Amidst the sea of voices, little is heard of trade 
and commerce and economics. Individualism is enthroned; 
association is difficult, belated, and feeble. There is lacking 
a constituency which shall act as one man. The wrongs 
of the colonies seem abstractions. Wheat and corn and 
rice and indigo are not emblazoned on the flag as an elo- 
quent coat-of-arms. The stars must be pinned to the pen- 
non, on an azure field. Thirteen potatoes might not stand 
for the rights of man. But the products of land and sea 
were not forgotten. They were carefully arranged on the 
thirteen seals of the states. There, the plow, the sickle, 
the golden sheaf, the patient oxen and the farm-horse har- 
nessed for the field, the forest, the mine, the herds of 
cattle and sheep, the fleet of proud ships, the fishing-smack, 
wild beasts and wilder men, bespeak the economy for which 
the American people successfully struggled over a hundred 
years ago. We may put stars on the flag, but we hold the 
plow firmly in the furrow. 

Industrial interests preceded political in America, though 
as the record is usually made up by historians, the order 
seems the reverse. Certainly political rights were won first, 
and there followed the long struggle to secure industrial 
rights. Had industrial prosperity been allowed the colo- 
nists, the Revolutionary War would doubtless have long 
been delayed. Perhaps it might not have occurred. It 
was the relentless and irresistible pressure of economic ne- 
cessity that precipitated the war. Whatever the aspects of 
the eighteenth-century literature, it all signifies that the 



268 MORE I'ERFECT UNION NECESSARY [i 779-1 786 

war bci^an as an industrial struggle, was waged to the end 
as an industrial struggle, and left behind it grave economic 
problems, many of which are not yet settled. In attempt- 
ing to solve some of these problems, the people of the 
United States founded the present national government. 

As to the best manner of carrying on the war, Congress 
and the assemblies differed only in policy, not in principle. 
Revenue should be derived from three sources: taxation, 
loans, and bills of credit. With paper money, treasury 
notes, bills of credit — whatever the name — the people had 
long been familiar. During the seventy-five years preced- 
ing the Revolutionary War, the colonies had issued, in the 
aggregate, paper money to the amount of more than twenty- 
five hundred thousand pounds. What portion of this was 
redeemed at par is unknown. The colonists, like their 
contemporaries in Europe, had very loose ideas about 
finance. Depreciation of paper currency was viewed as a 
tax, and nothing more. What if the redemption was at 
a thousand to one — as it had been in the colonies — this 
signified merely that the fall from nominal value measured 
the use which the people had found for the money. Let 
everybody take care and pay his debts promptly, and the 
depreciation would be less. Even so sagacious a man as 
Franklin deliberately wrote that the fall in paper money 
operated as a tax. "This effect of paper money," he 
wrote, in 1779, while in France, "is not understood on this 
side the water, and indeed the whole is a mystery, even 
to the politicians, how we have been able to continue a war 
four years without money, and how we could pay with 
paper that had no previously fixed fund (i. e., revenue), 
appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency, as 
we manage it, is a wonderful machine. It performs its 
office when we issue it ; it pays and clothes troops, and 
provides victuals and ammunition, and when we are obliged 
to issue a quantity excessive, it pays itself off by depre- 
ciation." 

It was Franklin's idea, that as the money depreciated 
in everybody's hands, everybody thereby paid a tax to the 
extent of the depreciation. He seems to have believed 
that as rich men would hold most of this money, the tax 



1776-1787] FIAT MONEY 269 

would fall chiefly on them. Therefore, paper money was 
the friend of the poor man. If Franklin, at seventy-three, 
held such notions, what must have been the ideas about 
money held by the ignorant masses? He could not remem- 
ber the time when colonial paper was not in circulation. 
Its first issue, in large amounts, was made during his child- 
hood by nine colonies, chiefly for the purpose of equipping 
expeditions against the French in Canada. From 1707 
to 1775. hardly a year passed that did not record a paper 
issue. Franklin was the only eminent American whose life 
was identified with the most important public events of the 
eighteenth century. Long experience confirmed him in his 
financial opinions, and he seems never to have abandoned 
the premises which he laid down, while yet a young man, 
in his celebrated pamphlet, entitled "A Modest Inquiry 
into the Nature of Paper Money," written in defense of a 
paper issue, and responded to by an emission of bills by the 
legislature of Pennsylvania. The American people, down 
to the opening of the Revolution, and till sometime between 
the years 1780 and 1787, seem never to have doubted the 
soundness of fiat-money laws. Their confidence in paper 
money was as profound as their belief in the rights of man. 
When Congress, in 1775, was convinced that war was 
inevitable, it prepared the way by issuing five millions of 
paper money, in continental bills, boldly charged against 
the credit of the states. In 1776 it "voted supplies" which 
the states should furnish. By 1778 it was urging supplies; 
the states had not responded with full quotas. In 1775, the 
expense of impending war was estimated at two millions 
of dollars. Fifteen millions were issued during 1776, a 
portion in fractional parts of a dollar. But continental bills 
of all denominations now began to depreciate, and partly 
to remedy this, thirteen millions were issued during 1777. 
A loan was then proposed at four per cent, "the faith of 
the United States" to be pledged for five millions that 
should be borrowed abroad immediately; but money was 
scarce at a higher rate, and capitalists would not lend 
against odds. Congress then offered six per cent, and tried 
a lottery; that delusive scheme which for nearly a century 
was a familiar and favorite procedure, in one form or 



270 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [i 776-1 786 

another, with states and churches, colleges, bridge-build- 
ers, and impecunious persons of every sort, by means of 
which to pay honest debts, raise salaries, erect houses of 
worship, equip academic halls, and construct roads and 
canals at the expense of the unlucky. Not until as late as 
1850 was public opinion sufficiently regenerated to make 
constitutional provision against lotteries, and not until 
recent years has the last lottery company been banished 
from our soil. But the congressional lottery did not pros- 
per. Congress could not levy taxes; it must therefore bor- 
row or find relief in state quotas. 

During 1778, there were grave apprehensions that the 
struggle for independence might fail. The states were 
negligent in remitting, and Congress fell back upon another 
scheme: to raise money by anticipating the various quotas 
and apportion the amount to the several states. This was 
called at the time, not inaptly, "the same goose with a 
change of sauce." The people bore taxation with little 
grace. Most of them could see no difference in their bur- 
dens, whether Congress or Parliament caused them. In 

1778, there were fourteen issues by Congress, aggregating 
sixty-three and a half millions. The rude state of the art 
of printing made counterfeiting easy, and Congress was 
compelled to issue fifty millions on the 14th of January, 

1779, in place of the counterfeited notes. This practically 
increased the amount in circulation. Before the year closed, 
the issues by Congress amounted to one hundred and forty- 
five millions. Early in the year, it attempted to negotiate 
a loan of twenty millions. But what must be the credit of 
a revolutionary government whose bills of credit unre- 
deemed amounted to over two hundred and thirty-one mil- 
lions of dollars, and whose population numbered scarcely 
three millions, of which nearly one-fifth were slaves? It is 
almost impossible to determine the financial status of the 
confederation, at any time of its history. 

In September, 1779, John Jay drew up a report which 
shows the amount of congressional issues outstanding to be 
one hundred and sixty millions. On the first of the month 
Congress had resolved that the limit should be two hundred 
millions. Of this two hundred millions, eighty-eight mil- 



1784] PAPER ISSUES 271 

lions, during the next five years, were replaced by bills, 
named "new tenor," to the amount of four millions four 
hundred thousand. This new issue bore interest at six per 
cent. It clearly shows, in 1784, the terrible depreciation 
of continental issues. About forty millions lay in the 
federal treasury. Nearly seventy millions were scattered 
among the state treasuries or in the pockets of the people. 
It was not proposed to redeem these last mentioned at 
a higher rate than from seventy-five or a hundred to one. 
Here was an application of Franklin's theory of paper 
money. Depreciation was nothing less than the loss of 
from seventy to a hundred millions of dollars, in specie, 
chiefly by the last holders, who in most cases were the 
poor. The aftermath of litigation, forcing acts, feuds, 
crime, and general misery thus caused was the most serious 
harvest of the war. 

But the continental .bills were not all the paper money 
put into circulation. Each state issued an almost unlimited 
amount. By 1784, the quantity was so great that it cannot 
be exactly stated. In South Carolina, in 1776, a pair of 
boots cost seven hundred dollars in state paper. In 1780, 
Virginia issued ten million pounds, followed the next year 
by fifteen millions more. By 1784, Massachusetts, Con- 
necticut, and Pennsylvania had funded all their issues at 
their nominal value. In Virginia, the late issues would 
not pass at a thousand to one; in North Carolina, the state 
issues would not circulate at any value. In others, save 
the three refunding states, the bills passed as best they 
could. Yet in 1786 New Hampshire issued a further 
quantity "to please the people," who, it may be said, were 
in sympathy with Daniel Shays and his followers. 

Speculation and the abuse of credit were the sins of the 
age. Every tavern became a broker-shop. State money 
bore a better price than continental. Trade languished. 
Ships from friendly powers shunned American ports. The 
traveler from Boston to Savannah was compelled to change 
his money thirteen times, paying as many discounts. The 
discount fell as he journeyed southward, but his gold coins 
became a greater treasure, a rarer curiosity. People flooded 
with memorials a Congress which they did not respect. 



272 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1781 

Advice was freely given. There is plenty of gold and 
silver, but it is all shipped abroad ; let Congress forbid the 
exportation of coin and our money will be worth something. 
Let every patriot donate a dish, a spoon, or a buckle, and 
the federal melting-pot will soon be full. Let people stop 
speculation, go to work, economize, and money will take 
care of itself. But Congress, with whom custom was a 
matter of easiness, answered all complaints by making 
another paper issue. The friends of "metal money" began 
to calculate the time when the country would be crushed 
by the weight of "whole reams of depreciated paper." By 
the last of November, 1779, the total emission of conti- 
nental paper amounted to two hundred millions, of which 
more than one hundred and forty millions were for that 
year alone. Congress then abandoned further issues. 

On the 2d of March, 1781, Congress met for the first 
time under the Articles of Confederation, and at once 
proposed that the states surrender to it the right to issue 
bills of credit. The proposition was promptly rejected. 
Some states, in order to redeem their paper money, had 
confiscated the property of royalists. The United States 
had no authority to confiscate such property, nor had it 
property of its own upon which to base its own issues. 
Continental scrip was secured by faith alone. After the 
treaty of peace, in 1783, Congress was almost forgotten. 
Scarcely a quorum to do business could be gathered within 
its halls. Now and then the people heard of endless 
discussions about the navigation of the Mississippi, the sur- 
render of Western forts, the speculation in Western lands, 
and the wicked conduct of John Jay and the Spanish 
minister. The energies of the people were absorbed in 
new activities incident to a return to civil life. Men began 
to talk about the West. The cloth-covered ox-cart of the 
emigrant from New England was seen crawling, like an 
enormous insect with monstrous ribs, along the main road 
from Albany to Black Rock. Virginia veterans were pass- 
ing over the mountains into the blue-lands of Kentucky. 
Land scrip became the title to palatinates along the Mau- 
mee and the Scioto, and the block-house at Erie became 
the official center of the Northwest. Paper money pos- 



1783] A TARIFF PROPOSED 273 

sessed only a fictitious value. In later years, Secretary 
Woodward estimated that the depreciation of continental 
issues cost the people about two hundred million dollars. 

Soon after the meeting of Congress, Dr. Witherspoon, 
one of the delegates from New Jersey, introduced a reso- 
lution that the states should vest Congress with the exclu- 
sive right to superintend the commercial regulations of every 
state, and to levy duties upon all imported articles. This 
plain method of securing a revenue emerged from the te- 
dious debates as a recommendation to the states to allow 
Congress to levy, for the use of the United States, a duty 
of five per cent upon all foreign merchandise imported into 
any state, the revenue to be applied to pay the public debt. 
The duty was to continue until the debt should be "fully 
and finally paid." When the plan came before the state 
legislatures, Rhode Island refused its consent, and the sug- 
gestion came to naught. In 1783, Congress asked the 
states to grant permission to levy a fixed duty on spirituous 
liquors, tea, coffee, sugar, and molasses, and a five per cent 
ad valorem duty on all other articles, for the period of 
twenty-five years. An annual revenue of a million and a 
half dollars was expected from such a source, which would 
discharge the public debt, principal and interest. The col- 
lectors were to be appointed by the states, but to be amen- 
able to Congress. At this time the commission of the 
treasury sent out its report. The revenue of the confeder- 
ation in five months had been only one-fourth of the amount 
needed to support the government for a single day. But 
the gloomy report from the treasury had no effect on self- 
ish, jealous state legislators. Rhode Island again refused 
consent; the vote of New York was lost by division. 
Congress had made its last effort to obtain adequate powers 
to restore the public credit. 

Meantime, among the people a counter-revolution had 
begun. All classes were discussing the low condition of 
trade, commerce, and currency. Opinions of every shade 
were current. There were imposters and non-imposters, 
paper-money men and hard-money men. Trade should be 
left to take care of itself. Congress might better go 
home ; if the states should grant such a revenue. Congress 



274 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1776-1781 

would squander it, as millions had been squandered already. 
The commerce of the country was at the mercy of forei<^m 
powers, and as everybody knew that the thirteen States 
would never agree on the subject, Congress should be 
empowered to regulate the industrial interests of the 
country. So ran replies and rejoinders. The merchants 
of Boston set forth the deplorable condition of business, 
and formally petitioned the general court to instruct the 
Massachusetts delegates in Congress to bring up the whole 
question again. They found a leader in Governor Bow- 
doin, who told the state legislature that bitter experience 
had shown the necessity of bestowing upon Congress the 
power to control trade for a limited time. He suggested 
that each state appoint delegates to a trade convention, in 
which they might settle amicably what powers should be 
given to the general government. But the Massachusetts 
delegates, led by Rufus King, arguing that any change in 
the confederation would lead to the establishment of an 
aristocracy, defeated for the time the realization of the 
governor's plan. 

The economic errors of our fathers cannot be said to be 
of absorbing interest, but their faults are none the less 
instructive, and even picturesque, when viewed in relation 
to other errors of their age and to errors of our own. The 
economic policies of continental nations, of which that pur- 
sued by Frederick the Great may be taken as a type, had 
a decisive influence upon the commercial status of this 
country during the last years of the eighteenth century. 
By the American war, and the political and industrial 
complications in India, the British navigation system 
received a fatal blow. No longer could England locate or 
monopolize the markets of the world and dictate the terms 
of trade. The industries of the globe, long held in arbi- 
trary check by the jealous and stupid policies of petty, 
warring cabinets in small continental states, were slightly 
loosening from their grasp. With freedom came newness 
of industrial life. The United States became the one neu- 
tral nation of the civilized portion of the globe, and this 
unique position had a remarkable and favorable effect upon 
her population. The winning of American independence 



1776 1787] PUBLIC DISORDERS 275 

was the stimulus to the industrial action of the modern 
world. 

Political economy was not taught in American schools, 
and the phrase is seldom found in the newspapers of the 
eighteenth century. An examination of the constitutions 
of various American states, down to the close of Jackson's 
administration, brings out no evidence that the delegates 
to constitutional conventions, or to sessions of the legisla- 
ture called for the purpose of revising or making a constitu- 
tion, troubled themselves with the doctrines of Malthus or 
Ricardo, or discussed the intricate relations of international 
trade. A strike was then a crime. The morale of labor 
was low; both relatively and absolutely the laborer was 
worse off than he is to-day. Machinery has so changed 
the effectiveness of labor that only the simplest employ- 
ments enter into the comparison. But a careful examina- 
tion of the daily affairs of the American people of that time 
clearly shows that some of the elements of the present 
"industrial war" were not wholly undefined then. The 
nation was bankrupt, and a bankrupt nation has a large 
stock of economic difficulties on hand. These difficulties 
were aggravated by the jarring commercial laws of the 
several states. Could the merchant of Philadelphia fail to 
know that the discrimination against him when he sent 
his goods to New York was unjust? As he handled the 
curious currency of his native land, and the more curious 
currency made by private enterprise and foreign specula- 
tors — coarse paper issues from fourteen governments about 
him — Spanish joes, pewter coins, silver-washed, imported 
to deceive him, and penny tokens, thinly gilded, which he 
must ring upon his counter and test between his teeth, 
could he fail to discover that public credit was rapidly 
ebbing away? 

Amidst such prostration we might not expect to find 
powerful opposition to any remedy to public disorders, but 
opposition of this kind was common. Congress, it was 
said, has no right to adopt the commercial laws of one state 
rather than those of another; whose commercial laws would 
all be willing to obey? Nor will the states ever allow Con- 
gress to prescribe commercial laws of its own ; for has not 



276 MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1776-1786 

New York, led by Governor Clinton, repeatedly refused 
to "Congress any right whatever to interfere in the trade 
of that state?" The merchants in the North and the 
planters in the South at last reached the same conclusion. 
"If Congress lays an impost," said the merchants, "we 
will gain, because the duty will be paid by the consumer, 
and we shall no longer be troubled by the constant fluctu- 
ations in prices caused by the conflicting laws of so many 
states; smuggling will cease, and prices will be regulated 
by a common unit of measure — general commercial laws." 
"If Congress fixes an impost," said the planters, "we shall 
no longer be obliged to compete with raw products from 
abroad, and the discrimination in our favor will raise the 
price of our products and create a home market." The 
planters and the merchants supported Congress. 

As the merchants of Boston had found a friend in Gov- 
ernor Bowdoin, the planters of Virginia appealed to the 
house of burgesses, and found an advocate in James Madi- 
son. On the last day of the session of 1786, Madison suc- 
ceeded in getting the house to pass an act the consequences 
of which no statesman could have foreseen. He began a 
movement which, from obscure beginnings, gained strength 
and favor with every slight advance; which passed quickly 
and almost imperceptibly from state to state, and swelled 
at last into a national impulse, that found adequate expres- 
sion in the constitutional convention of 1787. 

Between Maryland and Virginia the Potomac River was 
the boundary, the common highway of commerce to and 
from the states bordering on its waters. The duties levied 
by these states were constantly evaded, and each state 
accused the other of harboring smugglers. Complaints 
were repeatedly brought before the state legislatures. As 
early as 1784, Madison had made personal observation of 
these infractions of interstate law, and had written to Jef- 
ferson suggesting the appointment of a joint commission 
by Virginia and Maryland in order to ascertain the respect- 
ive rights and powers of the states over the commerce on 
the river. A bill Avas soon brought into the Virginia house 
of burgesses; three commissioners were appointed for that 
commonwealth, three were appointed by Maryland, and in 



17S5-1786] RAGE FOR FIAT MONEY 277 

March, 1785, the commission met at Alexandria, but soon 
adjourned to Mount Vernon. As the commissioners entered 
upon an examination of the interests committed to their 
charge, many questions pertinent to the case but beyond 
their jurisdiction arose, Delaware and Pennsylvania were 
concerned in the commerce on the river; if it was to the 
interest of Maryland and Virginia to agree to uniform 
duties, was not a similar agreement beneficial to Pennsyl- 
vania and Delaware? If to these four states, why not also 
to all the states in the Union? These ideas, advanced by 
Washington, became the seed of a more perfect Union. 
While yet at Mount Vernon the commissioners drew up a 
report suggesting that two commissioners be appointed by 
each of the states along the Potomac to report a uniform 
system the next year. Maryland at once invited Pennsyl- 
vania and Delaware to participate in a common commercial 
policy, but Virginia, leading the way to grander things, 
passed a similar resolution, extending its provisions, and 
sending a copy to each state, invited all to appoint dele- 
gates to meet in a trade convention at Annapolis, on the 
second Monday in September, 1786. The spirit of the 
planters and the merchants had at last taken hold of 
the politicians. It was this resolution which the house of 
burgesses passed on the last day of the session of 1786, and 
Madison had inserted a clause, which met the approval of 
that body, that the convention about to be called should 
take into consideration the trade and commerce of the 
whole country, and that Congress should be vested with 
powers to regulate commerce. 

The people, meanwhile, alarmed by continued industrial 
depression and impending bankruptcy, had sought refuge 
in the very evils which had caused the imminent extinction 
of public credit. The rage for paper money had broken 
out afresh and more violently than before. Legislators lost 
their wits. "We have no money, but let us make money 
and wipe out our debts." In seven states the hard-money 
men were outvoted. Within the year Maryland, North 
Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New 
Hampshire, and Vermont issued great quantities of paper 
money. They also attempted to enforce its circulation by 



27S MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1786-1787 

law. "If a man refused to take a state bill he should be 
made to suffer." Public morals fell with the currency. 

The worst element of the debtor class congregated in 
armed mobs and prevented the sittings of the courts in 
Massachusetts, that executions might not issue against 
delinquent debtors. Whole counties in New England 
became demoralized. Blood was shed in Rhode Island 
when the sheriffs attempted to carry the forcing laws into 
effect. Shays' rebellion raged all winter in western Massa- 
chusetts. The merchants, the lawyers, and the courts were 
the objects of popular hatred and abuse. The governors 
of Rhode Island and Vermont openly favored the insur- 
gents in Massachusetts. The jails were alternately filled 
by the sheriff and emptied by the mob. Farmers refused 
to bring their produce to the towns. Consumers and pro- 
ducers were at enmity, and values were for a time upset by 
odious laws passed to bolster up a limp and worthless cur- 
rency. Had it not been for the veterans of the war, the 
scenes of the French Revolution might have found a prece- 
dent in America. 

The winter of 1786-87 was unusually severe. The 
laborer complained that his occasional employment was 
poorly paid with a paper bill of varying value with which 
he could not supply his family with the necessaries of life. 
Merchants complained that the farmers would not trade 
with them, and that they could not afford to barter, as 
their stock was imported and had been paid for in coin. 
Tax collectors returned men who for years had been reputed 
the wealthiest men of the town. Thoughtful men grew 
alarmed. Washington's circular letter from Newburg read 
like a prophecy: "We shall be left nearly in a state of 
nature, or we may find our own unhappy experience that 
there is a natural and necessary progression from the ex- 
treme of anarchy to the extreme of tyranny, and that arbi- 
trary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty 
abused by licentiousness." Amidst the bankruptcy of the 
times, many states passed laws impairing the obligation of 
contracts. The sense of justice seemed lost to the Repub- 
lic. If the inviolability of private rights was to be lawfully 
ignored and formally declared void by public legislation, 



1786] REPUDIATION 279 

then after that "the deluge." "Interference with private 
rights and the steady dispensation with justice," wrote 
Madison in after years, "were the evils which above all 
others led to the new Constitution." 

The general government had repudiated its debts, and 
the several states now began to scale or to repudiate theirs. 
When contracts no longer had the sanction of law, there 
could be little discrimination between public credit and pub- 
lic debt. At Mount Vernon Washington had said to the 
commissioners: "The proposition is self-evident. We are 
either a united people or we are not so; if the former, let 
us in all matters of national concern act as a nation which 
has a national character to support. If the states individu- 
ally attempt to regulate commerce, an abortion or a many- 
headed monster will be the issue. If we consider ourselves 
or wish to be considered by others as a united people, why 
not adopt the measures which are characteristic of it and 
support the honor and dignity of one? If we are afraid 
to trust one another under qualified powers, there is an end 
of union. " 

During the winter of 1785-86, Congress rarely secured 
a quorum. The confederation was falling to pieces. State 
legislatures found difficulty in electing delegates to Congress. 
The office brought neither profit, fame, nor congenial 
duties. On the 15th of February, 1786, the committee 
appointed by Congress out of its own body to take into 
consideration the state of the Union made a remarkable 
report.* "The states have failed to come up to their 
requisitions. The public embarrassments are daily increas- 
ing. It is the instant duty of Congress to declare most 
explicitly that the crisis has arrived when the people of 
the United States, by whose will and for whose benefit 
the federal government has been instituted, must speedily 
decide whether they will support their rank as a nation 
by maintaining the public faith at home and abroad, and 
by a timely exertion in establishing a general revenue 
strengthen the confederation, and no longer hazard not 
only the existence of the Union, but also the existence of 
those great and invaluable rights for which they have so 

* Journal of Congress. 



2So MORE PERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1786 

arduously and honorably contended." The helplessness 
of Congress and the collapse of the confederation was thus 
solemnly and publicly confessed to the world. 

New Jersey, in 1786, broke the last strand of the con- 
federation by refusing to pay its quota of one hundred and 
sixty-six thousand dollars. In vain did the congressional 
committee plead the cause of the Union before the legisla- 
ture of that state. New York granted Congress the right 
to impose a revenue, but destroyed the value of the grant 
by a special clause. When Congress feebly protested. 
Governor Clinton plainly told that anomalous body that 
he did not consider the matter of importance whether the 
debts were paid or not; New York was capable of man- 
aging its own affairs, and its interests were paramount to 
those of Congress. 

Foreign affairs were in an equally bad plight. On the 
5th of January, 1786, Temple wrote to the English gov- 
ernment: "The trade and navigation of the states appear 
to be now in a great measure at a standstill." On the 9th 
of April following, Otto wrote to the French ministry: 
"It is necessary either to dissolve the confederation or to 
give to Congress means proportional to its wants. It calls 
upon the states for the last time to act as a nation. It 
affords them a glimpse of the fatal and inevitable conse- 
quences of bankruptcy, and it declares to the whole world 
that it is not to blame for the violation of the engagements 
which it has made in the name of its constituents. All its 
resources are exhausted ; the payment of taxes diminishes 
daily, and scarcely suffices for the moderate expenses of the 
government; the present crisis concerns solely the exist- 
ence of Congress and of the confederation. The most 
important members of Congress are doing all in their power 
to add to the act of confederation some articles which the 
present situation of affairs appears to render indispensable; 
they propose to give to Congress executive powers and the 
exclusive right to make emissions of paper money, and of 
regulating commerce." 

Franklin had written to Jefferson, then in Paris, that 
the disposition to furnish Congress with ample powers was 
augmenting daily as people became more enlightened. The 



I786J THE ANNAPOLIS MEETING ^8i 

newspapers teemed with the writings of "Cato" and 
"Camillus," "Plain Farmer" and "Cincinnatus." Numer- 
ous pamphlets examined "the present discontent." Pro- 
fessors in the colleges interspersed their lectures on the 
Greek and the Italian republics with comments on the needs 
of the American confederation. Clergymen chose political 
texts and lawyers debated problems in finance and govern- 
ment while the court was taking its recess. The interests 
of trade, currency, and commerce were swiftly assuming a 
political character. 

The trade convention met at Annapolis in September, 
1786, but the attendance of delegates was so small as to 
discourage the few who had assembled from taking into 
prolonged consideration at that time the grave questions 
that agitated the country. Neither Georgia nor South 
Carolina had sent delegates; nor was a single New Eng- 
land state represented. Little was done except to meet 
and adjourn. But before adjourning, Madison and Ham- 
ilton agreed upon a report, which, drawn with all of Ham- 
ilton's foresight, was adopted by the convention after a 
discussion of two days.* The report urged that a new 
convention, composed of delegates from each state, pos- 
sessed of greater powers, should be called to meet in 
Philadelphia on the loth of May, 1787. Copies of this 
report were sent to each commonwealth. 

Again Virginia took the lead, and on the 9th of 
November, the house of burgesses passed a bill, brought 
in by Madison, that the state should send delegates to the 
constitutional convention. The first delegate chosen by 
Virginia was her foremost citizen, Washington. Madison 
was the fifth chosen, and his services in the convention 
were destined to be greater than those of any other dele- 
gate on the floor. Virginia was followed by New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, and Georgia, 
which in succession chose their ablest men. Li Massa- 
chusetts, a bitter opposition delayed the election of delegates 
till the 2 1st of February, when Congress also gave its weak 
and formal consent to the convention. Rhode Island never 

*The proceedings of the Annapolis convention are given in the 
Documentary History of the Constitution, Vol. I. 



282 MORE I'ERFECT UNION NECESSARY [1787 

sent a delegation, but before midsummer every other state 
was represented. On the lOth of May, 1787, the con- 
vention assembled in the old State House, where so many 
of the delegates had won their just fame. 

When autumn came, the work of the convention was 
done — a work far different than that for which the members 
had been elected. The Constitution of the United States 
was given to the people. The country had supposed that 
the convention was merely a trade convention. But we 
now know the secret history, or at least the greater por- 
tion of the history, of the proceedings of the convention. 
It was published more than fifty years later, when the 
framers of the national Constitution were in their graves. 
Those wise men were equal to the grave problems before 
them; their names find an imperishable monument in the 
work of their hands; they linked together the industrial 
and political interests of the nation, and formed a more 
perfect union. But the causes which led to the making of 
the Constitution were economic rather than political in 
character. 

Turning to the course of events culminating in the 
ratification of the Constitution, we shall discover that the 
fate of the measure was dictated by stern economic laws 
which will have their own in spite of the selfishness, the 
narrow vision, the crooked ambition of men. No event in 
American history illustrates more completely the compul- 
sions of the public economy under which we live than does 
the formation of the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787, 
and its ratification as the supreme law of the land. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE CONSTITUTION 

1787 

On the 25 th of May, enough members appeared in 
Philadelphia to organize the convention. It assembled in 
the room in which the Declaration of Independence had 
been debated and signed. Seven of the members of the 
convention had signed that great paper, and four had signed 
the Articles of Confederation. All were greatly distin- 
guished for their public services in Congress, on the bench, 
in the army, and in the assemblies. Among the members 
were Washington and Franklin, Robert Morris, Roger 
Sherman, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John 
Rutledge, Elbridge Gerry, and Charles C. Pinckney. 
Washington was unanimously chosen presiding officer. 
All summer long the convention met in secret session. On 
the 17th of September, thirty-nine of the fifty-four dele- 
gates who had attended affixed their names to the Consti- 
tution of the United States. It was the result of several 
compromises. 

The delegates knew that no form of national government 
had any chance of succeeding which did not embody the 
best features of the state governments and the Articles of 
Confederation. In other words, the new plan must con- 
form to the civil experience of the country. While this 
condition seems an easy one with which to comply, many 
details of it proved difficult. No one thought of departing 
from the familiar division of civil functions, legislative, 
executive, and judiciary, and the division was made more 
perfect in the national Constitution than it had been in 
any state constitution. The titles for the several depart- 
ments were supplied by long use in the states and colonies. 
Since 1689 the term "congress" had become familiar to the 
people, and particularly since 1765. The upper house was 

283 



2^4 THE CONSTITUTION [1787 

called the senate in eight states,* and the lower house, the 
house of representatives in four.j- 

The title "president" had been in use since 1609 in 
Virginia, the chief ofificer of the old London and Plymouth 
companies having borne the name; but in more recent 
years, since the organization of the states in 1776, it had 
been given by the people of four of them to their chief 
executive, and had been the name of the principal official 
of the Continental Congress and of the Congress of the 
confederation. 

In each state there were a supreme court and inferior 
courts, and the general titles were preserved in the national 
Constitution. In all the states the judges were appointed 
by the executive, usually with the consent of the upper 
house, a method now continued in the Constitution by the 
federal convention. 

There were important details in the state governments 
with which the people were familiar, and which could not 
be wisely omitted from the new Constitution. The retire- 
ment of a portion of the senate at regular periods prevailed 
in four states. :{: The exclusive power of the lower house 
to originate money bills was peculiar to New England, 
though from time immemorial the practice of the British 
Parliament. The ordinary powers of Congress were like 
those common to the state legislatures. 

But as soon as the convention passed beyond these 
common provisions it entered upon many difficulties, some 
of which seemed for a time to be beyond power of settle- 
ment. Chief of these difficulties were representation, the 
presidency, and the powers of Congress. All these were 
embodied in the fundamental question, Shall the new gov- 
ernment, "the more perfect union," be national or federal 
in character? If it was to be strictly national, then repre- 
sentation in both branches of Congress would be in propor- 
tion to population; if it was to be strictly federal, repre- 
sentation in both branches would be equal. In a strictly 

♦Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. 
t New England. 
J New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Delaware. 



1787] THE CONVENTION AT WORK 285 

national government the people would be represented ; in 
a strictly federal one, the states. The difficulty was 
intensified by the existence of slavery. Should slaves and 
freemen be represented equally ? Opinions were conflicting 
and radical, and after anxious debate, both parties agreed 
to concessions. The new government was made partly 
national and partly federal ; the states were to be repre- 
sented each by two Senators; the House of Representatives 
should represent the people, each state having its propor- 
tion of members, to be determined by a census every ten 
years. Three-fifths of the slave population should be 
counted as freemen in the basis of representation. 

The organization, term, and powers of the executive 
were the last things settled by the convention. There 
was a prevailing distrust of a vigorous executive with a 
long term. Finally, the term of four years with re-eligi- 
bility was accepted. The term of the President's office 
being short, the convention relied on the people to select 
proper men from time to time. This detail having been 
settled, it was easier to agree on the President's powers; 
and in assigning them, the convention clearly followed the 
state constitutions. Every state except Rhode Island 
made the executive commander-in-chief of its army and 
navy; all except Rhode Island and Connecticut intrusted 
him with the pardoning power; all required him to take 
an oath of office. The governor of New York nominated 
for office, to the Senate; the governor of North Carolina 
filled vacancies in state offices till a new election or a 
regular appointment. Other presidential powers were 
suggested by the necessities of the plan which the conven- 
tion was framing. 

Even the office of Vice-President, which at first was 
hailed as superfluous, and which was suggested during the 
last days of the convention, had its original among the 
states, five of which had their deputy governor, or lieuten- 
ant-governor.* The lieutenant-governor of New York 
presided over the senate, and voted, but only in case of 
a tie, an arrangement copied in our national Constitution. 

* Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and 
New York. 



286 THE CONSTITUTION [1787 

North Carolina provided for a successor in case of the death 
of the governor — a provision duly cared for in the Consti- 
tution. The best method of choosing the President long 
engaged the attention of the convention. James Wilson, 
a delegate from Pennsylvania, urged a direct vote by the 
people, but this method was viewed by his colleagues as 
dangerously democratic. The method finally chosen, an 
election by special electors, now for many years popularly 
called the "Electoral College," was an experiment, and 
believed by the delegates to be a very excellent one. The 
senate of Maryland was chosen by special electors, and this 
precedent was cited. It appears, however, that the method 
finally agreed on was taken, not so much because of intrinsic 
excellence as because every other method proposed met 
with strong factional opposition. So the "Electoral 
College" was a compromise, and has proved not alto- 
gether a satisfactory one. It has led to one amendment of 
the Constitution.* 

It is well to bear in mind, respecting our national plan 
of government, the Constitution of the United States, that 
it is the embodiment of civil and political experience in the 
Old World and in the New. Its makers adhered closely 
to American experience as set forth in the state constitu- 
tions. They differed widely in their political opinions, 
some wishing a national government, others a federal gov- 
ernment. The result was a compromise. The government 
of the United States is partly federal and partly national in 
character. 

The convention began its work with a discussion of a 
plan submitted by the Virginia delegates, which declared 
that "a union of the states merely federal" would "not 
accomplish the objects proposed by the Articles of Con- 
federation — namely, common defense, security of liberty, 
and general welfare" — and therefore proposed "that a 
national government ought to be established, consisting 
of a supreme legislative, executive, and judiciary." The 
New Jersey delegates submitted a plan for a revision of the 
articles. Hamilton also submitted suggestions. By the 
Virginia plan, the nation would be supreme; by the New 

♦The twelfth. 



1787] SOURCES OF THE CONSTITUTION 287 

Jersey plan, the states would continue supreme. After 
much debate, the Virginia plan was made the basis of the 
new Constitution. But some provisions of the New Jersey 
plan, and others suggested by Hamilton, were adopted. 
The most difficult matters to settle were representation 
and taxation. These were compromised. 

The two compromises on representation were equal 
representation in the Senate and proportional representation 
in the House. The large (populous) states objected to the 
first; the small states to the second. The compromise on 
taxation was in part a compromise on representation also. 
It provided that the importation of slaves should cease in 
twenty-one years — that is, in 1808; that three-fifths of the 
slaves should count in representation, and that Congress 
might tax imports — that is, might pass a tariff law. 

The glave states wanted every slave to count as a free 
white in representation, and also favored the continuation 
of the slave trade. The free (commercial) states wanted 
the slaves omitted from the basis of representation, and 
also wanted to empower Congress to levy duties, excises, 
and customs on imports and exports. Each section gave 
up something and gained something. The result was the 
Constitution. 

From the state constitutions came the division into 
legislative power, executive power, and judicial power; the 
titles House of Representatives, Senate, President, and 
Supreme Court ; the special power of the House to originate 
money bills; the two years' term of Congressmen; the 
method of representation in the House and in the Senate; 
the retiring clause for the Senate; the appointment of 
judges by the President, with consent of the Senate; the 
powers of the President — to veto a bill, to pardon, to com- 
mand the army and navy, to nominate to office, to fill 
vacancies, and to send annual and special messages. 

The state constitutions also suggested the office of 
Vice-President, and his succession to the presidency; the 
provision of a census; the rules of procedure in Congress, 
and the method of choosing the President by "electors." 

From the Articles of Confederation came the title 
"congress," long in use, however, by the states, and the 



2S8 THP: constitution [1787 

distinct representation of the states as independent 
bodies. 

Much of the phraseology of the Constitution is like that 
of earlier American state papers: constitutions, declara- 
tions, and articles. 

The new features of the Constitution were: The 
supremacy of the national government within its own 
sphere;* the specific limitations of the United States," 
and of the states;*^ the creation of national courts;** the 
creation of United States citizenship, distinct from that of 
the state;*" the guaranty to every state of "a republican 
form of government";^ the oath of all state ofificers to 
support the Constitution of the United States;^ the 
definition and punishment of treason;" the direct authority 
of the United States over individuals,' and the admission 
of new states. J 

On the 17th of September, the Constitution, signed by 
the convention, was sent to the president of Congress, then 
sitting in New York, and copies were transmitted by that 
body to the governors of the states. These in turn sub- 
mitted the "new plan" to the assemblies, whom, as directed 
by the convention and by Congress, they requested to 
provide for the popular election of delegates to special state 
conventions to approve or to reject the plan. Conventions 
assembled, and discussed the Constitution with great thor- 
oughness. Many amendments were proposed, about one 
hundred and sixty in all. The first four states to act* 
ratified without suggestion of change; New Hampshire 
was the ninth to ratify (June 21, 1788), and the Constitu- 
•tion, by its own terms, became on that day "the supreme 
law of the land." Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia 
ratified unanimously. North Carolina and Rhode Island 
did not ratify till after the new government was in opera- 
tion. The Constitution narrowly escaped rejection; a 
change of two votes in New York, of five in Virginia, and 

• Art. VI, Sec. 2. 'Art. IV, Sec. 4. 

'"Art. I, Sec. 9. ^Art. VI, Sec. 3. 

•■ Art. I, Sec. 10. •'Art. Ill, Sec. 3. 

-> Art. III. 'Art. I. 

" Art. I, Sec. 3, CI. 3; Art. XIV. J Art. IV, Sec. 3. 

* Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Georgia. 



1789] WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION 289 

of ten in Massachusetts would have defeated it, and left the 
country without a government. It will be noticed that the 
Constitution was not submitted to a direct vote of the 
people, but to the vote of their representatives in thirteen 
state conventions. Neither was it ratified by the states, 
for the assemblies did not vote on it. It was ratified by 
the people of the several states, through conventions 
specially elected to consider it. 

By September, 1788, eleven states had ratified, and 
Congress passed an ordinance to put the Constitution into 
effect. It ordered an election of presidential electors to be 
held on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they 
should meet and vote for President and Vice-President on 
the first Wednesday in February, and that the new Con- 
gress should be elected and meet in New York City on the 
first Wednesday of March. Thus all depended on the 
election of a Congress and a President. When the first 
Wednesday of March came, and it was the 4th of the month, 
few members of Congress had arrived. The House did 
not organize till the 30th of March, and the Senate not 
till the 6th of April. Then the electoral vote was counted. 
Washington had been unanimously chosen President. Of the 
sixty-nine votes, John Adams had received thirty-four, the 
next highest number, and was declared Vice-President. On 
the 30th of April, Washington was inaugurated in New 
York. He took the solemn oath of of^ce in full view of 
the people, and when the simple, impressive ceremony was 
over, they shouted, "Long live George Washington, 
President of the United States!" The federal judiciary 
was soon after inaugurated ; executive departments were 
created, and the government was in full operation before 
the year closed.* 

*For a detailed account of the formation and adoption of the Con- 
stitution and of the inauguration of the government, see my Constitu- 
tional History of the United States, 1765-1895, Vols. 1 and II. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE RISE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT 
1789-1794 

To-day, when a new President turns from the delivery 
of his inaugural to take up the duties of his great office, 
he finds himself at the head of a thoroughly organized gov- 
ernment. His predecessor has called the Senate in extra 
session to act on his appointments. More than a hundred 
thousand clerks, distributed among eight executive depart- 
ments, are continuing the routine business of the govern- 
ment. National counts all over the land are hearing and 
deciding cases. Moreover, this vast business goes on in 
public buildings belonging to the United States. The new 
President may have a "policy" quite opposite to his pre- 
decessor's, but he does not have to begin a government. 
Now, Washington had to begin a government and inaugu- 
rate and carry out a policy. The condition of affairs was 
in many respects alarming. 

The United States had not a penny in the treasury and 
little credit either at home or abroad. The war left the 
confederation and the states deeply in debt. As the United 
States succeeded to the confederation, it inherited its 
debts, amounting to fifty-three million seven hundred 
thousand dollars, of which forty-two million dollars were 
due in this country and the remainder in Holland, France, 
and Spain. There were no national courts and no execu- 
tive departments as we now have them. 

The first duty of the government was plain: "To pay 
the debts and provide for the general welfare of the United 
States"; to organize the executive departments and a 
national judiciary. Debts and running expenses required 
a revenue. Congress has the sole power "to lay and collect 
taxes, duties, and imposts, and to pay the debts of the 
United States." Therefore, the first thing to do was to 

290 



1789-1798] EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS 291 

pass a bill to raise money. Congress was in session, and 
the Senate promptly confirmed Washington's nominations 
for heads of the departments: Thomas Jefferson, Secre- 
tary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury; 
Henry Knox, Secretary of War; Edmund Randolph, Attor- 
ney-General. The first three departments already existed, 
having grown up under the confederation. General Knox 
had been serving as Secretary of War; John Jay, as Sec- 
retary of the United States for the Department of Foreign 
Affairs; Robert Morris, as Superintendent of Finance. So 
Congress continued the old departments, changed the title 
of two, and defined the powers and duties of each by law. 
A new executive office, though not made a department, 
was created* when Edmund Randolph was appointed 
Attorney-General. Naval affairs were under charge of the 
War Department till 1798, and the Post Office under charge 
of the Treasury till I794.f Nearly all the governors had 
a council; the President's council came gradually to be 
called the Cabinet. 

Having created and filled the departments, Congress 
passed a tariff act, which Washington signed July 4, 1789. 
Soon the government had an income of two hundred 
thousand dollars a month. As the revenue for three 
months was sufficient to run the government a year. 
Congress soon had a surplus to apply on the debts. 

On the day after its organization, the Senate appointed 
a committee to prepare a bill for a national judiciary. It 
was written by Oliver Ellsworth, who afterward became 
chief justice of the United States, and it became a law 
September 24, 1789, W'ashington appointed John Jay, 
of New York, chief justice.:]: Thus the government was 
organized during the first six months of its existence. 

*The title of the department was changed to the Department of 
Justice, June 22, 1870. 

tCongress by law fixed the salary of the President at $25,000 per 
annum; Vice-President, $5,000; Secretary of State (called for a time 
Foreign Affairs), $3,500; other secretaries, $3,000. The Speaker of the 
House, $12 per day; members of Congress, $6 per day and thirty cents 
mileage. 

J His salary, $4,000 a year; the associate justices (at $3,500) were 
James Wilson, of Pennsylvania; William Gushing, of Massachusetts; 
Robert H. Harrison, of Maryland; John Blair, of Virginia. 



292 THE RISE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT [1789 

But Congress was confronted by a great debt, and there 
was much difference of opinion as to how it should be 
managed and paid. Finally, Congress directed Hamilton 
to report the debt in detail and to prepare a plan for its 
payment. He made an elaborate report, showing obliga- 
tions which had been issued by the Congress since 1775, 
bills of credit, loan certificates, and paper money of all kinds, 
and the foreign debt; also, the obligations of the states; 
and he proposed that the United States should assume the 
entire debt, state and national. Congress should issue 
bonds to the full amount, pledging the faith and credit of 
the nation to pay principal and interest. 

His plan at once found supporters and opponents in 
and out of Congress, but as a political measure it soon 
practically divided the people into two political parties: the 
Federalist, of which Hamilton himself was a leader; the 
anti-Federalist, or Republican, at first without a leader, 
but as soon as Jefferson arrived home (he had succeeded 
Franklin as minister to France) supplied with one who 
entered upon its organization and continued to be its chief 
for thirty years. Congress was quite unanimous for fund- 
ing the debt of the United States, foreign and domestic. 
The Republicans objected to making the state debt a 
national debt, and chiefly, they said, because it subordi- 
nated the states and made them dependent on the general 
government, whereas they were "free and independent," 
and, some added, "sovereign." So this matter of the 
assumption of the debt involved a great political principle. 
The matter was partly settled by a political bargain. 

As yet the country had no national capital. Some 
wanted New York; others, Philadelphia; others, a new 
"federal town" somewhere on the Potomac. One day 
Hamilton met Jefferson in front of the President's house 
in New York. He was greatly concerned over his assump- 
tion scheme, and it was likely to fall through. He pre- 
sented it to Jefferson as the hope of the country. Without 
it the Union, he said, would go to pieces. Congress had 
just located the capital at Germantown, and the bill had 
gone back to the Senate for concurrence in some minor 
amendments. The southern members were opposed to it, 



i79o] ASSUMPTION 293 

for they wanted the capital on the Potomac. Hamilton 
cared more for his assumption scheme than for the location 
of the capital; Jefferson cared more about the location of 
the capital than for assumption. A bargain was struck. 
Some of Hamilton's friends agreed to change their votes 
on the capital; some of Jefferson's agreed to change their 
votes on the assumption bill. Both measures were carried. 
The capital was located on the Potomac ; the debts of the 
states were assumed by the United States, and all the obli- 
gations of the Union thus became the national debt — 
seventy-five million dollars.* 

The immediate effect of assumption was the restoration 
of our national credit. About the best reputation a man 
can have is that he pays his debts, and in this respect a 
nation is like a man. The act of 1790, assuming all the 
debts, was one of the most important in our history. The 
United States thus became pledged to pay its debts, and 
passed revenue laws to supply the necessary funds. Let 
it be remembered that our prosperity as a people is princi- 
pally due to our policy from the first of paying our debts. 
Trade, commerce, and manufactures at once started up 
vigorously. The capital at Washington is a magnificent 
monument to national honesty. Congress decided that the 
government should be located at Philadelphia from 1790 
till 1800, and then be removed to the Potomac. f 

How should the new government care for its money 
and transact its financial affairs? Like England, should it 
hand the matter over to a private bank, or go into the 
banking business itself? Hamilton, obedient to the request 
of Congress, made an elaborate report on public credit, 

*This was principal and interest: Foreign debt, $11,710,378; domes- 
tic debt, $42,414,085; state debts (estimated), $25,000,000. The state 
debts assumed, $18,271,786. 

t President Washington appointed commissioners to survey the terri- 
tory on the Potomac. April 15, 1791, the first boundary-stone was placed, 
with Masonic ceremonies; the territory was named "The Territory of 
Columbia," and the capital, "The City of Washington." Major Pierre 
Charles L'Enfant was selected to lay out the town. The corner-stone of 
the "White House" was laid October 13, 1792; that of the capitol, Sep- 
tember 18, 1793. The government offices were moved to Washington 
from Philadelphia in October, 1800. There were then about three thou- 
sand inhabitants in the District. 



294 THE RISE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT [1791 

and advocated the establishment of a United States bank 
with a capital of ten million dollars, one-fifth to be sub- 
scribed by the government, four-fifths by the people at 
large. His purpose was twofold: first, to get the wealthy 
people of the country on the side of the government, and 
secondly, to centralize the business of the country in a na- 
tional bank and its branches, and to make the fate of the 
government the fate of every enterprise in the country. 
All this the government was to do by making the bank one of 
issue, and by forbidding other banks to issue bills. Thus 
there would be one national currency, and national bank 
bills should be receivable for all debts, taxes, and duties. 

Congress chartered the bank for twenty years, and 
Washington signed the act February 25, 1791. It was 
located at Philadelphia, with branches in the principal 
cities. It was so well managed that it paid sixteen per 
cent a year, and proved a great public convenience. Never 
before had the people had so useful a means of conducting 
business. Its establishment strengthened the government 
with the people. During its existence it handled more than 
one hundred million dollars of public money without loss. 
But the Democratic Republicans opposed the bank. They 
wanted state banks. They said a national bank was un- 
constitutional. Jefferson held and advocated this idea. 

The ordinance of 1787 contained a fugitive slave clause. 
In February, 1792, Congress passed an elaborate fugitive 
slave law, one of the "landmarks" in our history. It 
empowered the owner of the runaway slave to arrest him 
wherever found, and put at his disposal the great authority 
of the United States government, its courts, its Congress, 
its President. The law was only a special application of 
an article of the Constitution. It was frequently amended 
in later years, and became, as we shall see, an issue between 
political parties. 

Many amendments had been proposed by the states 
when the Constitution was before them, and Congress care- 
fully considered them all, and submitted twelve in 1789. 
The states ratified ten, Avhich were adopted so soon after 
the original Constitution that they really form a part of it. 
They are in the nature of a bill of rights; were copied in 



1792J POLITICAL PARTIES 295 

substance from the state constitutions, and are all in the 
nature of a limitation of the powers of Congress. They 
were ratified in 1789-1791. 

The year 1792 may be taken as the initial date when 
political parties were well enough organized to have their 
principles pretty clearly defined. 

The Federalists favored a national bank, a national 
currency, a strong national government. 

The Republicans (Democrats) favored state banks, state 
currency, a weak central (federal) government, and strong 
state governments. 

Chief among the Federalists were Hamilton, John 
Adams, Fisher Ames, John Marshall, John Jay, C. C. 
Pinckney, Rufus King, and Aaron Burr. 

Chief among the Republicans were Jefferson, Madison, 
Monroe, Randolph, Elbridge Gerry, Albert Gallatin, and 
Levi Lincoln. 

There were hundreds of lesser leaders of both parties all 
over the country. Political organization was carried on, 
slowly enough, by correspondence. Great mass-meetings of 
people from distant parts of the country were impossible, 
because there were no adequate means of travel. It is said 
that there are twenty thousand of Jefferson's letters in 
existence. Nowadays, party leaders write as little as pos- 
sible; they and their followers travel and consult. In the 
beginning, the two parties differed as to the powers of 
government : the Federalists favored a strong national 
government, "supreme in its operations" ; the Republicans 
favored strong state governments, which should interpret 
the Constitution as a court of last resort, because, they 
said, the states made the Constitution. 

In 1792, the second presidential election was held. 
Vermont had been admitted March 4, 1791, and Kentucky 
June I, 1792, the one a free, the other a slave state. 
Fifteen states voted in the election. Washington was 
supported by both parties, and received all the electoral 
votes, one hundred and thirty-two; John Adams received 
seventy-seven, George Clinton fifty, Thomas Jefferson 
four, and Aaron Burr one. The defeated candidates were 
to be heard from again. In most of the states, the presi- 



296 THE RISE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT [1794 

dential electors were chosen by popular vote. They were 
chosen by the legislatures in Connecticut, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, and Georgia. 
Washington retained his old cabinet. 

The West then began at the Alleghanies, beyond which 
lived quite a different people from those to the east. The 
West was quite shut off from the Eastern market, because 
there were no roads to reach it, and Spain levied a tariff 
on everything that passed New Orleans. What could the 
West do with its grain? It could not make flour at a profit, 
because it cost more to convey flour to market than it was 
worth. So the grain was distilled into whisky, which was 
marketable and of much value in little bulk. But the 
revenue act of 1789 levied a tax on whisky. Distilleries 
were common in the mountains from New York to Georgia, 
but most of them were inaccessible to the collectors. It 
was worth a man's life to venture tax-gathering over the 
mountains. The farmers near Pittsburg drove out the col- 
lectors and resisted arrest. The United States marshals 
reported their failures to the courts; the courts reported 
to the President. 

Now similar news came from the Carolina mountains. 
But Pittsburg was accessible. The insurrection in 1794 
covered nearly half the state of Pennsylvania. Washing- 
ton, by the authority of the Constitution, called on the 
governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and 
Virginia for fifteen thousand militia to help execute the 
law. It was a test case: would the governors support the 
President in putting down an insurrection against the 
United States? The governors replied by leading the 
militia in person, and the insurrection was put down. Not 
a life was lost. Washington later pardoned the leaders, 
convicted of treason. The insurrection cost the United 
States one million one hundred thousand dollars; but it 
was a test case. It showed that the sentiment of the 
country was on the side of the national government, and 
that the people would support its laws. It was a triumph 
for the Federalist party.* 

* In 1798 a similar lest of the government grew out of " Fries's Rebel- 
lion " in eastern Pennsylvania. Congress levied a stamp tax, like that 



CHAPTER XX 

NEUTRALITY AND UNION 

17S9-1797 

In 1789, the French Revolution burst out, affecting 
America as well as Europe. Louis XVI. "the friend of 
America," was executed in January, 1793, and in February 
the French Republic declared war against England. By 
the treaty of 1778, the United States had agreed to aid 
France in time of war against her enemies. Did the treaty 
hold? Should the United States remain neutral? With 
England we had a treaty of peace; with France a treaty of 
alliance (1778), and another of "amity and commerce" of 
the same date. France had possessions in the West Indies 
— the remnant of her once vast possessions in America. 
England would seize these. Should the United States aid 
France in retaining them? 

Washington summoned his Cabinet, and the critical 
question was discussed. Hamilton maintained that the 
change of government in France, from kingdom to republic, 
put an end to the treaties. Jefferson argued that the 
treaties were both binding; he had been in Paris when the 
revolution broke out, and his sympathies were with the 
French, But though the two ministers could not agree 
about the treaties, they agreed with Washington that the 
United States should be strictly neutral. On the 22d of 
-A ugu str- 1793, the President issued a "Proclamation of 
Neutrality." America would be friendly to England and 
France, but would favor neither power. 

of 1765, and a direct tax on negro slaves, land, and houses. When the 
Federal assessors came into eastern Pennsylvania and began counting 
and measuring the windows of the houses (in order to fix values), the 
German population took alarm, and many, led by John Fries, made 
armed resistance to the authorities. Fries was indicted for treason and 
sentenced to be hanged. President Adams had called out the militia 
and suppressed the insurrection by force. He pardoned Fries. 

297 



29S NEUTRALITY AND UNION [1793 

This did not please France. On the 8th of April, 1793, 
the French minister, Citizen Genet, arrived in Charleston, 
South Carolina, and at once issued letters of marque, and 
began fitting out privateers against English commerce, 
altogether conducting himself as if the United States were 
France. He met with ovations all the way to Philadelphia, 
and Jacobin clubs were organized by French sympathizers 
all over the country. But no Federalists were seen at any 
of their meetings. At Philadelphia, Genet read the 
President's proclamation, but he ignored it, and actually 
succeeded in sending to sea the Little Sarah, a captured 
English ship, which he refitted as a French privateer. He 
determined to appeal to the country, thus treating Wash- 
ington's proclamation with contempt. The President at 
once demanded his recall, and Citizen Genet's three months' 
career came speedily to an end. 

Genet's wild course would soon have been forgotten had 
not the American people lost their heads. Probably more 
than half of them abused Washington and the government 
for insisting on neutrality. In thousands of excited gath- 
erings, love for France, our friend, hatred for England, 
our enemy, were shouted and sung amidst the clink of 
glasses, the glare of torches, the din of fife and drum. The 
Republicans seelned to live at the cofTee-houses — novelties 
lately set up — and everything French was imitated. We 
have never done so again, and we can now afTord to smile. 
Men dropped their titles, time-honored, simple Saxon 
usages; called one another "citizen," embraced like French- 
men ; wore the French tricolor, and celebrated all the 
French victories. But not a Federalist did these things. 
So, after all, the furor was a political campaign by which 
the people of the United States were clearing up the skies 
of party politics. The Federalists stood with Hamilton 
and the President; the Republicans, with Jefferson. 

The policy of neutrality was adopted strictly for our 
best interests, but it was a timely and friendly act toward 
England. That country, however, failed to respond. 
England had not yet removed her troops from the western 
posts. She discriminated against our commerce by still 
higher duties; she excluded us from the West India trade; 



1793] IMPRESSMENT 299 

she treated our minister, John Adams, with meager polite- 
ness; she searched our ships and took off as many sailors 
as she chose, on the plea that they were Englishmen, 
and that "once an Englishman, always an Englishman." 
So there were several distinct points of difference be- 
tween England and the United States, and England, 
instead of attempting to harmonize them when she heard 
of Washington's friendly proclamation, continued to in- 
sist on their continuance. These disputed points were as 
follows: 

England held that all provisions on the way to her 
enemies could be seized as "contraband of war." We 
insisted that this applied only to munitions of war, and not 
to breadstuffs, our chief exportation. She insisted that 
the declaration of a blockade was equivalent to one, and 
therefore ships could be seized on the way to a blockaded 
port. We insisted that a "paper blockade" was of no 
validity. She insisted, and had insisted since 1756, that a 
neutral nation could not trade in time of war where she 
was forbidden to trade in time of peace. This conformed 
to the established policy of European nations having colo- 
nies, that there should be no "free trade" with these by 
other nations. We insisted that England had no right to 
prescribe the terms of our trade with French and Spanish 
colonies; that was our business with France and Spain; 
and she insisted that our ships, having the enemies' prop- 
erty on board, could be seized. We insisted that "free 
ships make free goods." 

Now, in all these differences may be seen the old claims 
of European nations regarding their respective colonial 
rights in America; but the United States were no longer 
colonies. Either international law must be changed, or the 
United States must be treated as a nation, equal in every 
respect to any in Europe. By the time these differences 
were settled, two things had happened : international law 
was changed, and the United States was recognized as a 
sovereign nation. 

No practice of England so deeply outraged American 
feeling as the impressment of our sailors. It was a practice 
as old as the British navy, and was sustained by many 



300 NEUTRALITY AND UNION [1795 

decisions in the English courts.* English cruisers boldly 
entered our ports and took off seamen from the decks of 
our ships, and even from private houses. American mer- 
chantmen were overhauled and left crippled for sailors. 
At last public sentiment could bear "the right of search" 
no longer. In 1794, Congress laid an embargo forbidding 
our vessels to leave American ports; and anxious to stop 
the rising tide of anger against England, Washington, in 
April, sent Chief Justice Jay to England as a special envoy 
to arrange all differences. 

In March, 1795, Washington received Jay's treaty. 
It was somewhat a disappointment, but it was an improve- 
ment on the rather vague provisions of the treaty of 1783. 
Its good features were: British troops should at once be 
removed from the West; the northeast boundary (Maine) 
should be settled by a commission ; negroes carried away 
by the British in 1783 should be paid for, and discrimi- 
nating duties on American commerce should cease. 

Its objectionable features were: Our claim of "neutral 
rights" in trade was rejected; the right of search was not 
given up; we could trade with the West Indies only in 
ships of less than seventy tons, and we should not export 
molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton to any part of the 
world. The treaty was to expire in twelve years. 

The President called a special session of the Senate in 
June to consider the treaty, and it promptly struck out the 
West India and the export provisions. As soon as the 
terms of the treaty were publicly known, the country was 
swept by an excitement rivaling the late French furor. 
The treaty and effigies of Jay were burned at public meet- 
ings. Hamilton, while attempting to defend it in a public 
address at New York, was stoned. Assembly after assembly 
rained down resolutions upon Congress declaring the treaty 

* Commenting on the "impress of shipwrights" mentioned in 
Hamlet, Act I, Scene i, 75, Dr. Furness remarks, quoting Lord Camp- 
bell, "Such confidence has there been in Shakespeare's accuracy, that 
this passage has been quoted both by text-writers and by judges on the 
bench as an authority upon the legality of the press-gang and upon the 
debated question whether shipwrights as well as common seamen are 
liable to be pressed into the service of the royal navy." See Hamlet, 
Variorum Edition, Furness, Vol. L P- I3- 



1795] TREATY WITH SPAIN 301 

unconstitutional. Washington was abused in terms whicii, 
he said, "could scarcely be applied to Nero, to a notorious 
defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." For a long 
time the House of Representatives debated the treaty, 
claiming that it had the right to be consulted, as it made 
the appropriations to carry it into effect. 

The question was a new one, and had to be settled. 
The Senate at last ratified, the President signed, and the 
House made the necessary appropriation.* Fisher Ames, 
in the first great speech made in Congress, settled the fate 
of the treaty in the House. Washington was right. The 
treaty, though unsatisfactory, was timely, for it saved us 
from war with England. Once in force, it was quite liber- 
ally interpreted, and the commerce of the country in- 
creased. Several important things are to be remembered 
about it : 

It was the first treaty under the Constitution. It 
forever settled the question of the treaty-making power; 
the President and the Senate only can make a treaty. 

It was favored by the Federalists and opposed by the 
Republicans, and it left several serious differences between 
England and the United States. 

Amidst the excitement over Jay's treaty, another treaty 
of great importance was made, but it attracted little atten- 
tion in the eastern states, though it was received with great 
satisfaction in the West. On the 27th of October, 1795, 
we made our first treaty with Spain, "of friendship, limits, 
and navigation." It fixed highly favorable terms of trade 
on the principle stated in the treaty, "that free ships shall 
also give freedom to goods." It fixed our southern 
boundary, from the Mississippi eastward on the thirtieth 
degree north latitude to the Atlantic, the present northern 
boundary of Florida. It permitted citizens of the United 
States for three years to use New Orleans as a port of 
deposit, subject only to "the hire of the stores" there. 
From thence they could ship wherever they chose. The 
effect of the treaty was immediate. All the farmers of the 
West could now float their produce to market by the great 
river and its tributaries. So vast was this trade, and New 

*The treaty was proclaimed February 29, 1796. 



302 NEUTRALITY AND UNION [1785-1795 

Orleans soon proved so important, the attention of the 
country was for the first time directed to Louisiana. 

The frontier, from Tennessee to the Great Lakes, was 
harried by the Indians from the summer of 1785 for ten 
years, and the British agents at Detroit were at the bottom 
of much of this savage work. General St. Clair, governor 
of the Northwest Territory, made a feeble inroad upon the 
tribes, but only incensed them to further ravages. They 
swept down upon the Ohio settlements and threatened the 
destruction of every white family west of Pittsburg. The 
fifty families at Presque Isle (Erie) were daily in expecta- 
tion of attack. Washington, in 1791, approved a scheme 
for planting military posts from Cincinnati to the Chicago 
River. He intrusted their construction to St. Clair, and 
in parting from him, said repeatedly, "Beware of an 
ambuscade." 

On the Wabash River, St. Clair was led by the wily 
Indians into an ambuscade from which only a few of his 
men escaped. His defeat was as complete as Braddock's, 
of unhappy memory. General Anthony Wayne was 
appointed to supersede him. He was a soldier, made 
careful preparations, and in 1794 completely destroyed 
the Indian power in the Northwest. The Indians sued 
for peace, and by the treaty of Greeneville ceded the land 
comprising the greater part of northern Ohio and southern 
Indiana. This was in 1795. Population now poured in so 
fast that Ohio was admitted as a state seven years after the 
treaty.* 

In November, 1796, occurred the third presidential 
election. The Federalists supported John Adams, and 
Thomas Pinckney of Maryland ; the Democratic Republi- 
cans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Tennessee had 
been admitted June i, and sixteen states voted. The 
electoral vote was divided among thirteen men, not all of 
whom were candidates. George Clinton received seven 
votes, and Washington, though not a candidate, received 
two. The result of the election made Adams, a Federalist, 
President, and JefTerson, a Democratic Republican, Vice- 

* See an account of this early migration, in my Constitutional History 
of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, Chapter VIII. 



1796] WASHINGTON'S COUNSEL 303 

President ; he received sixty-eight votes, only three less 
than Adams. There was no convention, no political plat- 
form, no nomination of candidates. In ten states the 
electors were chosen by popular vote ; in Connecticut, 
New York, New Jersey, Delaware, South Carolina, and 
Georgia, they were chosen by the legislatures. 

Washington, who had now been in public life for nearly 
twenty years, declined a re-election. If we go back as 
early as the French wars, he had been serving the public 
forty-five years. He felt that he had earned repose. 
Before retiring from office, he issued a farewell address, 
full of wisdom, to his countrymen. He had tried to be 
free and non-partisan as President, but he had found it 
impossible. His two great cabinet ministers constantly 
disagreed. Jefferson resigned in 1794, Hamilton in 1795. 
But Hamilton never lost his influence with Washington. 
His administrations were Federalist. With wisdom un- 
excelled in history, he had started the new government, 
and had firmly laid its foundations. In doing this he was 
aided chiefly by the eminent men whom he had learned to 
trust during the Revolutionary War, and especially during 
the making and the ratification of the Constitution. The 
world is now full of his fame. In his farewell address to 
the American people, he urged upon them "the immense 
value of national union, unrestrained intercourse between 
North, South, East, and West; the continuance of the 
Union as the primary object of patriotic desire; the main- 
tenance of public credit and good faith, and justice toward 
all nations; entangling alliances with none. The great rule 
of conduct for us," said he, "in regard to foreign nations 
is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them 
as little political connection as possible; if we remain one 
people, under an efficient government, the period is not far 
off when we may defy material injury from external annoy- 
ance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the 
neutrality we may at any time resolve upon, to be scrupu- 
lously respected; it is our true policy to steer clear of per- 
manent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE FALL OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY 

1797-1801 

Though Washington's administration left the country 
prosperous and he had given the people good advice, the 
Union was yet weak, and neutrality seemed, as yet, only a 
piece of Federalist policy. Adams was inaugurated March 
4, 1797. He retained Washington's Cabinet, a grievous 
error, as that body was not harmonious, and the Federalist 
party was already rent by factions. France was angry at 
us for making a treaty with England instead of fighting 
her. Washington, greatly desiring peace, had sent Charles 
Cotesworth Pinckney as minister to France, but the French 
Directory refused to receive him unless he could promise 
that the United States would practically join the French 
Republic in its war with England. Moreover, the Directory 
gave notice that no American minister would be received 
on any other terms. Here was a sudden and severe test 
of the doctrine of neutrality and peace. Adams was 
indignant at this insult to our minister. Congress was 
summoned, and war was imminent; but at last the Presi- 
dent decided to send a special mission to France. 

John Marshall, a Federalist, and Elbridge Gerry, a 
Republican but long a personal friend of Adams, were 
sent to join Pinckney. Now, the special mission was a 
suggestion of the Republicans. Soon after arriving in 
Paris, in October, 1797, our commissioners were met by 
three persons who claimed to represent the Directory. 
Interviews an.d diplomatic notes followed. Finally, the 
French agents spoke out plainly: "It is money; it is 
expected you will offer money, fifty thousand pounds, for 
the pockets of the Directory." That meant fifty thousand 
dollars to each director. Moreover, the American envoys 
should ofificially apologize for the President's message to 

304 



1799] COMPLICATIONS WITH FRANCE 305 

Congress in which he had said that "we shall convince 
France and the whole world that we are not a degraded 
people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense 
of inferiority." When the American envoys finally com- 
prehended the French demand, Pinckney replied, "No, not 
a sixpence." The envoys sent all the correspondence to 
the President, the names of Talleyrand's agents being 
altered to Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z. As soon as the 
dispatches were made public, they and the mission were 
nicknamed "X, Y, Z," and the reply of our envoys was 
echoed in the popular cry, "Millions for defense, but not 
one cent for tribute." 

When news of all this reached America, the people unit- 
ed as never before. Federalists and Republicans vying with 
one another in expressing indignation against France. The 
tricolors which had been hung in the coffee-houses three 
years before were torn down and trampled in the street. 
Resolutions from hundreds of mass-meetings all over the 
land poured in upon Congress. The two French treaties 
were suspended. The cry was, "War with France!" And 
the Federalists secretly smiled as they saw the old black 
cockades of Revolutionary days — the Federal party badge — 
worn by the Democratic Republicans. Party distinctions 
were for the time forgotten. Congress did not declare war, 
but it prepared for one. Washington was made lieutenant- 
general, a navy was begun, and the Navy Department 
created. Troops were enrolled, and all the principal coast 
towns were busy building forts and throwing up earthworks. 

Hardly was all this preparation begun before the ocean 
was dotted with American privateers, this time in search of 
French merchantmen. The French West Indies were the 
objective of our attack. Besides this swarm of privateers, 
our navy of thirty-four frigates and lesser vessels was scour- 
ing the seas in search of French ships. Most famed of our 
frigates was the Constellation, thirty-eight guns. Captain 
Thomas Truxton. In February, 1799, he captured the 
thirty-eight-gun frigate L'Insurgente in the Caribbean Sea, 
and a little later captured the Vengeance, fifty-four guns, 
after a fierce fight. 

The Directory began to realize that President Adams 



3o6 FALL OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY [i 798-1 799 

would not apologize for his message to Congress, but would 
make good his words, and it notified our government that 
it would receive envoys if they were sent. Nowadays, 
we would say under the circumstances, "No, send us a 
mission first"; but as war had not been formally declared 
and as we wanted peace, the President, in 1799, sent Oliver 
Ellsworth, famed as the author of the judiciary act, and 
then chief justice; William Richardson Davie, one of the 
signers of the Constitution, and a popular governor of North 
Carolina, and William Vans Murray, an able lawyer, as 
special envoys. When they reached Paris, they found that 
another revolution had swept the Directory out of existence. 
Napoleon Bonaparte was first consul of France. On the 
30th of September, he concluded a treaty with our envoys 
of "peace, commerce, navigation, and fisheries." We were 
destined to have transactions of vast importance with 
Napoleon during the next few years. 

The current of feeling hostile to France swept a Demo- 
cratic majority out of Congress and a Federalist majority 
in. Believing that the opportunity had now come to 
weaken their opponents and to strengthen themselves per- 
manently, the Federalists determined to strike at what 
they thought was the source of Democratic strength — the 
foreign vote, and the newspapers, the pamphleteers, and 
orators who were accustomed to abuse Washington, Adams, 
Hamilton, the Federalist party, and Federalist measures 
generally. Immigration had scarcely begun, but most of 
the aliens in the country were hostile to the Federalists, 
because the Federalists were friendly to England, and most 
of the aliens were Irishmen or Frenchmen. After an 
exciting discussion, in and out of Congress, two acts were 
passed, June, 1798. 

The alien act empowered the President, at his discre- 
tion, to order any alien out of the country if he thought 
him "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United 
States," or "concerned in any treasonable or secret machi- 
nations against the government. " In case the alien, warned 
to depart, was found in the country, he could be fined and 
imprisoned for three years. The act was to expire in 1800. 

The sedition act was more severe. Any person who 



1798-1799] THE ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS 307 

defamed the President, or either house of Congress, or 
stirred up sedition against them, should be Hable, in any 
national court, to a fine of two thousand dollars and im- 
prisonment for two years. Hereafter, in order to become 
a United States citizen, a foreigner must reside in the 
country fourteen years. 

The sedition law was immediately enforced, and a few 
editors of Democratic Republican papers, and among them 
a noted pamphleteer and writer, a friend of Jefferson, 
named Callender, were arrested. Hamilton had not ap- 
proved of the laws, "Let us not establish tyranny," he 
wrote concerning it. While the Democratic editors were 
silenced, the Federalist editors were allowed to say what 
they chose. Little did the authors of the alien and sedition 
laws foresee the consequence of their legislation. 

Amidst the excitement of the French war and the dis- 
cussion of the alien and sedition acts, on January 8, 1798, 
President Adams, in a message to Congress, announced the 
adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. 
It originated in 1794, from a decision of the Supreme Court 
that a private citizen could sue a state of which he was not 
a resident. The amendment takes the question entirely 
out of the judicial power of the United States and leaves it 
wholly with the state. This was a fatal blow to one of the 
doctrines of the Federalist party — the supremacy of the 
national judiciary power. 

The alien and sedition laws, in Jefferson's opinion, vio- 
lated the principles of American government. He deter- 
mined to organize public opinion against them and to 
overthrow the party that had enacted them. This he 
would do through the ancient sources of power, the assem- 
blies. He wrote a set of resolutions, which the Kentucky 
legislature adopted; and another set, written at his instiga- 
tion by Madison, was adopted by the legislature of Vir- 
ginia. Though varying in their language, the two reso- 
lutions agreed: that the Constitution of the United States 
is a compact, or agreement, to which the states were equal 
parties, and that "each party has an equal right to judge 
for itself" whether the Constitution had been violated, 
and what the redress should be. 



3o8 FALL OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY [i 798-1 799 

As to who was to apply the remedy, the Kentucky 
resolutions said, "each state" ; the Virginia resolutions 
said, "the states"; but both agreed that the alien and 
sedition laws were "unconstitutional and void." The Vir- 
ginia resolutions were sent to all the state legislatures. 
Seven states, Delaware, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, 
New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont, 
formally replied early in 1799, and sustained the constitu- 
tionality of the laws. Kentucky rejoined with a second 
set, in November. Speaking of the Constitution and any 
infraction of it, these resolutions declared, "That the 
several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign 
and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge 
of the infraction ; and that a nullification by these sover- 
eignties of all unauthorized acts done under color of that 
instrument is the rightful remedy." 

Here were two doctrines of vital importance to the 
people of the United States: that the states are sovereign, 
and that they can nullify an act of Congress, if they judge 
it unconstitutional. 

Madison had resigned his seat in Congress to carry the 
set of resolutions he had written through the Virginia 
legislature. After the replies of the seven states were 
received, Madison, as chairman of the committee of the 
Virginia house of delegates, drew up a ver\' long and elabo- 
rate report, relative to them ; to the alien and sedition acts, 
and to the Virginia resolutions. It stated the principles 
of the Democratic Republican party. It reaffirmed the 
resolutions: that the states made the Constitution and were 
judges of its infraction. Madison did not declare the state 
sovereign, nor did he use the word nullification. He said 
(in the language of the resolutions) "that in case of a delib- 
erate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, 
not granted by the compact (i. e., the Constitution), the 
states, who are parties thereto, have the right and are in 
duty bound to interpose, for arresting the progress of the 
evil and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the 
authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them." 
This was the famous "doctrine of 1798." which was of 
dominating importance for the next fifty years. 



i8oo] WASHINGTON 309 

If this mass of resolutions seems hard to understaiul, it 
may easily be remembered that Jefferson and Madison useil 
tliese resokitions as the most effective way of rousing the 
people against the Federalist party. The doctrine of 1798, 
states rights, states sovereignty — they are two very differ- 
ent ideas — was essentially a party platform, and the oldest 
in our history. The leaders of the Democratic Repub- 
licans were getting the country ready for the presidential 
election of 1800. 

The sixth Congress had just assembled and was about 
to enter upon business when John Marshall, arising in his 
place in the House, announced the death of Washington at 
Mount Vernon. He had been a national figure so long, 
he seemed a permanent part of American institutions. 
Party rancor was now for a time hushed, and all hastened 
to do honor to the man "first in war, first in peace, and 
first in the hearts of his countrymen." In France, Napo- 
leon ordered public mourning for him; and the commander 
of the British fleet, Lord Bridport, ordered the flags on his 
sixty men-of-war to be lowered at half-mast. Washington 
is one of three moderns of whom, it may be said, the world 
never gets through talking and writing. Franklin had died 
in April nine years before. A century has tried their works 
and their words. Like Lincoln, they belong to the ages. 

In the last years of Adams' administration, the sum- 
mer and fall of 1800, the offices, the clerks, and the archives 
of the government were moved from Philadelphia to Wash- 
ington. Never was a drearier town made the capital of a 
great nation. The city which to-day is one of the finest 
in the world was then a straggling village, abounding in 
scrub-oaks and pines; its roads, of deep, yellow mud, quite 
like tunnels through the wild woods. Two wings of the 
capitol were scarcely ready for the Houses; the President's 
mansion was only partly finished. Mrs. Aclams dried 
clothes in what is now the blue room of the White House. 
All this newness was the newness of desolation. One of 
the common objections to the town at the time was that it 
was too far west. 

The tactics of the Democratic leaders, the folly of 
Federalist legislation, and the will of the people now 



3IO FALL OF THE FEDERALIST PARTY [1801 

wrought a change in the national government. There 
were no conventions, no platforms. The Federalist mem- 
bers of Congress met in caucus and named John Adams and 
C. C. Pinckney of South Carolina, and Thomas Jefferson 
and Aaron Burr were named in like manner by the Demo- 
cratic Republicans. Sixteen states voted, and in eight, 
Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
vania, Delaware, South Carolina, and Georgia, the electors 
were chosen by the legislatures. When the electoral votes 
were counted, February 11, 1801, it was found that Jeffer- 
son and Burr had each seventy-three, Adams sixty-five, and 
Pinckney sixty-four. No one had a majority, and by the 
Constitution the election went to the House. On the 
17th, the thirty-sixth ballot was taken; ten states voted 
for Jefferson, four for Burr, and two cast blank votes. 
Jefferson was declared President and Burr Vice-President. 
The Federalists distrusted Jefferson, but they feared Burr. 
Hamilton, so long the political opponent of Jefferson, had 
been instrumental in making him President. Burr resolved 
on revenge.* It is worthy of remark that Jefferson, the 
author of the Kentucky resolutions, which set forth the 
doctrine of state sovereignty, was chosen President by 
the House of Representatives voting by states. 

But the election of a Democratic chief magistrate was 
not the full extent of the change that had swept over the 
country. Both houses of Congress were overwhelmingly 
Democratic. A new party had come into power, and save 
for a very brief interval, this party was destined to remain 
in power till 1861. Just before President Adams left office. 
Chief Justice Ellsworth died, and John Marshall was ap- 
pointed to the head of the Supreme Court. Marshall was 
a leading Federalist, and in his appointment, the most im- 
portant Adams ever made, he put at the head of the court, 
as time proved, for thirty-four years, the greatest judge 
America has known. For many years the court was not in 
sympathy with the opinions of Jefferson and the Demo- 
cratic party. Before following the course of the new party 
and men in power, let us take a glance at the people who 
had elected them. 

* He killed Hamilton in a duel in 1804. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION 

1776-1800 

The people of the United States were first accurately 
counted in 1790, when it was found that they were a little 
less than 4,000,000 (3,929,214), of whom only 131,000 
lived in cities. Only a small part of the country was in- 
habited, nve-sixths of it being yet a wilderness. The fron- 
tier had not changed much since 1776. There were about 
760,000 negro slaves. In the order of population, Vir- 
ginia stood first (748,000), Massachusetts, with the District 
of Maine, second (475,327), Pennsylvania third (434,000), 
North Carolina fourth (394,000), New York fifth (340,000), 
Maryland sixth (320,000), South Carolina seventh (249,000), 
Connecticut eighth (238,000), New Jersey ninth (184,000), 
and New Hampshire tenth (141,000). Then followed Ver- 
mont, Georgia, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Delaware, and 
Tennessee. Mason and Dixon's line very nearly divided 
the population equally; there being nineteen people north 
to every eighteen south of it. This line also divided the 
country into the farming states and the planting states. 
This line and the Ohio River also divided the states into 
slave or free. But New York and New Jersey had not yet 
abolished slavery, so they must be added to the column 
south of the line. 

The Americans were a nation of farmers. Only six 
towns had over 8,000 people. Charleston with 16,000 and 
Baltimore with 13,000 were the only large cities of the 
South; New York with 33,000, Philadelphia with 28,000,* 
and Boston with 18,000, the only large cities of the North. 
All these towns had a rural look. The houses were in the 
midst of spacious gardens. Indeed, many of these gardens 

* Two suburbs of Philadelphia, Northern Liberties and Southwark, 
had some 15,000. 

3" 



312 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [1776-1800 

were small farms. The streets were unpaved, and lighted 
dimly by oil lanterns, but only in the business portions. 
The night-watch patrolled the town, called the hours, and 
questioned all loiterers after nine o'clock. Every house- 
holder kept a leathern fire-bucket, hung near his bed, and 
belonged to a fire company. Baltimore lighted its streets 
and organized a day police in 1783. Cincinnati and Louis- 
ville, Kentucky, were founded in 1780; Pittsburg, in 1784; 
Harrisburg, in 1785; Binghamton and Syracuse, in 1787; 
Marietta, Ohio, in 1788; Washington, in 1793; Dayton, 
Ohio, in 1794, and Cleveland, in 1796. 

Farm labor was done with oxen and by hand, with 
clumsy wooden plows and heavy hand-made tools. Not 
until 1797 were cast-iron plows introduced. The farmers 
were long prejudiced against them, saying that the iron 
would poison the land and ruin the crop. Wooden plows 
with a short iron point continued in use as late as 1850. 
In the North, farm labor was paid not over forty cents a 
day, and commonly rum was included. Grain was cut with 
a sickle, and the cradle was yet in common use as late as 
1835. It was a pretty sight, in haying-time, to see twenty 
or thirty men swinging their scythes with a common stroke 
and marching through the tall grass, each man cutting his 
three acres a day. Wheat, oats, and rye were threshed 
with a flail, or trodden out by oxen. The rich farmer kept 
a man threshing all winter. If one turns to an almanac of 
the time, he will see a rude picture of the thresher at the 
top of the page, from November to March. 

In the South, skillful overseers directed the slaves. 
The tobacco was stripped, and baled or put into casks; the 
cotton, cleaned and baled. One laborer could clean about 
six pounds a day. In 1793, Eli Whitney, a graduate of 
Yale, and at the time a tutor in a Georgia family, invented 
the cotton-gin, which, in its first rude form, enabled a 
laborer to clean a thousand pounds a day. He had made 
one of the great inventions of the age, and had increased 
the value of slave labor beyond human calculation. In 
1792 the export of cotton was only 138,328 pounds, in 
1795 it was 6,276,300, and this was only the beginning of 
the domain of "King Cotton." Not alone did it increase 



1776-1800] COLLEGE TRAINING 313 

the acreage and the profits of the crop in the South ; it 
soon started scores of cotton-mills in the North, and gave 
a new impetus to slavery. North and South participated 
in the profits of slave labor. 

In proportion to population there were more school and 
college bred men in the United States from 1776 to 1800 
than in England, France, or Spain. Of the fifty-five men 
who made the Constitution, all were not only of exceptional 
ability, but also of extensive knowledge. Franklin, though 
not a college man, was the first American who can be called 
a man of letters. Washington was not a college man, but 
his writings, which fill a dozen octavo volumes, attest that 
he was a master of sound sense, a practical man in every 
way. But among this company of statesmen were five 
graduates of Princeton ; three each of Yale, Harvard, and 
William and Mary ; two of Pennsylvania, and one each of 
Columbia (then King's College), Oxford, Glasgow, and 
Edinburgh. The clergymen of the country were frequently 
men of fine classical training, but may of the circuit riders 
knew only their Bibles and their duty. 

As early as 175 1, medical lectures, the first in America, 
were delivered by Dr. Thomas Cadwalader in Philadelphia, 
and in 1768 the college of Philadelphia had ten "bachel- 
ors of medicine." Philadelphia was the scientific center of 
the country. In 1790, James Wilson, an associate justice 
of the United States Supreme Court, began the first course 
of law lectures in America, at the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, in the presence of President Washington and his 
Cabinet, both houses of Congress, and the executive, the 
legislative, and judicial branches of the government of Penn- 
sylvania and Philadelphia. This was the beginning of the 
first law school in America. 

When, in 1788, the Ohio Land Company set apart land 
for a college and for public schools, the beginning of the 
American common school system as we know it was made. 
At least one-sixteenth of the public domain has been appro- 
priated to the support of free schools. 

Newspapers and magazines as we know them did not 
exist. There are now over twelve thousand periodicals issued 
in this country, Down to 1800 there had not been over 



314 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [1776-1800 

forty-five. Of these, twenty-one bore the title "Gazette," 
with the name of the state or town prefixed. FrankHn 
started the first magazine, The General Magazine and His- 
torical Chronicle, in 1741, in Philadelphia. The first daily 
paper, TJie Pennsylvania Packet, or The General Advertiser, 
was published in Philadelphia in 1784. The first newspaper 
exclusively devoted to commercial interests was TJie Boston 
Prices-Current and Marine Intelligencer, Conunercial and 
Mercantile, 1795. Two years later the first medical maga- 
zine, entitled TJie Medical Repository , was published in 
New York City. 

The newspaper was usually of two sheets, covered with 
business advertisements, notices of runaway slaves and 
apprentices, of lotteries, and of the arrival of barques and 
packets. It printed a few letters from various parts of the 
country. These were private letters which, being possibly 
of general interest, the receiver had lent to the editor. 
Editorials were unknown until about the time of the French 
excitement during Washington's administration. They 
were usually abusive and often libelous. The type was 
frequently bad, the paper coarse, and all the illustrations 
crude. As means of travel were lacking, a newspaper 
rarely had a circulation twenty miles from its press. Two 
hundred names made a long list of subscribers. The most 
common books were the Bible and the almanac. The 
New England almanac, and Poor Richard's, the latter 
Franklin's, were the most celebrated. 

There were, however, some fine specimens of the art of 
printing done, especially in Philadelphia, Germantown, New 
York, and Boston. P^ranklin's printing-house in Philadel- 
phia turned out editions of the classics, of the laws, and 
some miscellaneous books, equal to any now made. The 
state laws (1776- 1 800) were usually well printed. In 1783, 
Noah Webster brought out his American Spelling Book, 
the first of its kind in this country. It ultimately reached 
a sale of millions of copies, and is still in use. In 1789, 
Jedediah Morse published the first geography of the 
United States, and it continued in use for over fifty years. 
The maps and the description were in separate books. 
The schools soon made a market for text-books. If a col- 



1776-1800] BOOKS AND WRITERS 315 

lection of school-books from all countries since 1776 could 
be made, ours would be found to have published the greater 
number, the most expensive, and the best. 

Of famed books written by Americans, during the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century, there were two, the 
Federalist, the joint production of Hamilton, Madison, and 
Jay, in 1787-88, though the greater part was by Hamilton; 
and Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, written in 1782, and 
published first in Paris, probably in 1785, and in America 
in 1787. More famed than these is Franklin's Autobiog- 
raphy, written in 1757-59, ^"<^ published in 1789. 

With the return of peace came the muses, and they 
indited many odes, elegies, and tragedies. Joel Barlow, 
Francis Hopkinson, Philip Frenau, and Jonathan Trum- 
bull published freely during these years. Most famed of 
their writings was Trumbull's "McFingal, " completed in 
1782. Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, the first part of which 
appeared in France in 1793, and was suppressed, was com- 
pleted and published in America, three years later. His 
Crisis (1776- 1783), Rights of Man (1791-92), and Disserta- 
tion on the First Principles of Government (1795) were 
considered classic for a time by the more ardent Repub- 
licans. 

Of single poems during this period, the best known is 
Joseph Hopkinson's Hail Columbia, written in 1798, and 
sung for the first time in a Philadelphia theater in honor of 
the President, John Adams. The author was the son of 
Francis Hopkinson, one of the "Signers," whose Battle 
of the Kegs (1779) had made him the most popular Ameri- 
can verse-writer of his generation. The essayists of the 
time were rather heavy writers. The best known are Ben- 
jamin Rush, Noah Webster, Matthew Carey, and Francis 
Hopkinson. The poems of the negress, Phillis Wheatley 
Peters, published at Albany in 1793, were considered by the 
friends of her race convincing proof of the natural abilities 
of the negro. 

Charles Brockden Brown, the first American novelist, 
published Alcuin, Wieland, Ormond, and Arthur Mervyn, 
from 1797 to 1800. Samuel L. Mitchill, professor of 
chemistry in Columbia College, and one of the first United 



3i6 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [i 776-1800 

States Senators from New York, edited Tlic Medical Reposi- 
tory, founded in 1797, the first scientific journal in America, 
and he contributed many articles on chemistry. Rush's 
Account of the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia (1794) remains 
one of the most valuable historical pamphlets of the time. 

Probably the most popular book written during these 
years was Weems' Life of Washington, published in 
1800 — a fountain of fables and traditions about the first 
American. It is Weems who serves up the story of the 
cherry-tree and the hatchet. This book passed through 
many editions; it is one of the seven books which Lincoln 
read in his boyhood. 

Lindley Murray's English Grammar (1795) and English 
Exercises, though not literature, helped make it, as they 
continued to be popular text-books for half a century. 
Noah Webster's American Atlas, published in the same 
year, was the first of its kind prepared in this country. 
Webster's Grammatical Institute of the English Language, 
which combined reader, speller, and grammar, begun in 
1783, was completed two years later, and became the most 
popular text-book ever in use in this country. Millions of 
copies have been s(ild, and it is still in use. It ranks among 
American text-books as his dictionary (1806) has ranked 
among English dictionaries. 

John Adams' History of the Principal Republics of the 
World (1794), Robert Proud's History of Pennsylvania 
(1797), Hannah Adams's History of New England (1799), 
Belknap's History of New Hampshire (1784), and David 
Ramsay's History of the Revolution of South Carolina 
(1785) are still read by scholars. 

John Adams' Defense of the Constitutions of the 
United States (1787) and his Discourses on Davila (1789-90) 
were written to explain the American system of govern- 
ment to foreigners as well as to establish political prin- 
ciples held by the party to which Adams belonged. Only 
by a liberal use of the word literature can it be said that 
American literature from 1776 to 1800 was enriched by 
fifty books, though thrice that number might be named. 
Of the fifty, only one is now widely read, Franklin's Auto- 
biography. This classic has appeared in many languages 



1776-1800] TRAVEL 317 

and in many editions. It is the one American book of 
profound personal interest and faultless style which the 
eighteenth century produced. 

During the eighteenth century no American wrote 
poetry, though many wrote verses. The first American 
poet was William Cullen Bryant, who was born in Cum- 
mington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. In his eight- 
eenth year he published Thanatopsis and The Ages, and he 
continued his literary work until 1873. Bryant and Wash- 
ington Irving began their literary life about the same time 
(1808), and are justly styled the fathers of American 
literature, American prose literature begins with Irving's, 
Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809); American 
poetry, with Bryant's Thanatopsis, the first draft of which 
was prepared some years before the poem was printed. 
Irving was born in New York City, in 1783. 

Good roads were lacking everywhere. Members of Con- 
gress came from distant parts on horseback. Public coaches 
were quite unknown in the South and rarely used in the 
North. By 1796 there were four daily stages between New 
York and Philadelphia and one between Philadelphia and 
Baltimore. These stages were less comfortable than those 
now in use in remote parts of the country. About every 
sixteen miles the horses, and sometimes the driver, were 
changed. Forty miles a day was considered rapid transit. 
There were few bridges, and passengers were delayed by 
floods, were tipped over in rivers, stuck in mud-holes, were 
half frozen in cold weather, and tortured by dirt, heat, and 
smells in warm. With good luck the journey from Phila- 
delphia to New York could be made in two days. It is 
now made in two hours. 

At intervals along the road stood inns, or taverns, offer- 
ing refreshment to man and beast. Bad roads, bad weather, 
and accidents made it necessary to be prepared to remain 
at the inns. Some of these could accommodate fifty people, 
but they had to sleep from five to eight in a room. A 
people who could stand all this were pretty likely to win in 
any war they undertook. People then found no more fault 
with the inns than they do now with the hotels. Break- 
fast was usually sixpence, dinner one shilling, supper one 



3i8 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [i 776-1800 

shilling sixpence, and lodging one shilling, or about a dollar 
a day for the entire expense. 

Immigrants found the way into the western country 
over what were called "the wilderness roads," the tracks 
which blazed the way for the railroads of half a century 
later The principal roads at the North ran from Albany 
to 151ack Rock (Niagara), thence along the lakeshore to 
Sandusky and Miami. In Pennsylvania, these roads con- 
verged upon Pittsburg, from which place emigrants went 
down the Ohio. 

From Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the roads 
crossed the mountains, usually at the gaps, and beyond 
merged in the rivers or centered upon Lexington, Danville, 
Clarkesville, Knoxville, and Nashville. As many as thirty 
thousand people were known to have "gone West" in a 
single year. Not a day passed that did not witness the 
sinuous emigrant-train winding its way over the Cumber- 
land Mountains, along the Mohawk Valley, or over the 
fertile meadoAvs of the Western Reserve. Thus New Eng- 
land, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas were spread- 
ing toward the great river, and the laws, the customs, the 
religion, the dress, the ideals of different portions of the 
East were transplanted to the Mississippi Valley. 

Though we were a nation of farmers, most boys in the 
North yearned to learn trades. The heavy, clumsy tools, 
the long days, and the customary treatment of boys on 
the farm — working them hard and giving them little or 
nothing as their own — drove them into other occupations. 
Thousands went to sea, and hundreds never came back. 
The oldest son usually inherited the farm. The girls got 
married. The younger boys "shifted for themselves." 
But to learn a trade was a serious business. Seven years 
must be spent as an apprentice. Board and clothes the 
first three years, ten or fifteen dollars in addition the next 
three, and the last, a suit of clothes and twenty-five dollars, 
were highly favorable terms. But let no one imagine that 
a boy had the bewildering multitude of occupations before 
him that exist to-day. He could learn to be a carpenter, 
a mason, a shoemaker, a tinner, a blacksmith, a cabinet- 
maker, a goldsmith, a printer, a painter, a rope-maker, a 



1776-iSoo] FAMOUS BOYS 319 

paper-maker, a miller, or a tallow-chandler. But as there 
was not room for all the boys in these trades, many went 
West and took up land, paying seventy-five cents to one 
dollar and twenty-five cents an acre to one of the land com- 
panies. But some boys studied medicine with the village 
doctor, read law with the village lawyer, or theology with 
the village preacher. 

If Washington, when he was inaugurated in 1789, had 
possessed the power to read the future, he would have seen 
a number of boys in the country who were destined to fame 
almost as great as his own. There was the infant James 
Fenimore Cooper, who began life in Burlington, New Jer- 
sey, about the time Washington became President, and 
who was to write, by and by, the most popular and some of 
the best American novels. Down in Petersburg, Virginia, 
was three-year-old Winfield Scott, who half a century 
later was to command the armies of the United States, and 
was to be defeated for the presidency in 1852 by a son of 
New Hampshire. In Orange County, Virginia, not far 
from Winfield Scott, lived a boy two years older than Scott, 
name Zachary Taylor, who also was destined to become a 
famous soldier, winning the nickname of "Never Sur- 
render," and at last becoming President. Only a few 
squares from the President's house in New York lived a boy 
of six years who was named after the President, Washington 
Irving. One day he met the President in the street and 
was honored by being spoken to by him. When a very old 
man he Hked to tell how Washington had put his hand on 
his head and wished him a prosperous life. The President 
would not have thought less of the rosy-cheeked boy could 
he have known that he was to become his biographer, and 
was to write books which remain among the classics in our 
language. Washington Irving was the only one of these 
"famous boys" who saw the inauguration of Washington. 
There were four other boys, each seven years of age, Avho 
were destined to most distinguished careers, and a fifth boy 
of twelve who was to divide with them the admiration of 
the people for half a century. 

The four were: Daniel Webster, of Saulsbury, New 
Hampshire; John C. Calhoun, of Abbeville, South Caro- 



320 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [i 776-1800 

lina; Thomas H. Benton, of HilLsboro, North Carolina, and 
Martin Van Buren, of Kinderhook, New York; the fifth 
boy was Henry Clay, the "Millboy of the Slashes," as the 
place of his birth in Virginia was sometimes called. These 
five boys were to enter public life together; were to com- 
pete for its honors, to share its responsibilities, to feel its 
disappointments, and to be political rivals for nearly forty 
years. One was to be Vice-President and then President; 
another was to be Vice-President, and like the other three, 
to fail of the presidency. But they were all to become 
eminent American statesmen. In Berkeley, Virginia, lived 
a boy of sixteen who was destined to fight in many an Indian 
war in the Ohio country, and to become President of the 
United States for one month, and to be the first to die in 
ofifice — William Henry Harrison. 

There were two young men, each twenty-two, whose 
birth and fortunes were very different. One of these was 
John Quincy Adams, son of the Vice-President, carefully 
educated, trained in diplomacy, and at this time completing 
his law course in the ofifice of Theophilus Parsons, at New- 
buryport, in Massachusetts. The other, Andrew Jackson, 
had recently arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was 
entering upon the turbulent duties of public prosecutor. 
Whether he Avas born in North Carolina or South Carolina 
is uncertain. But the people of the United States, espe- 
cially in the Southwest, soon recognized his extraordinary 
powers. Had Washington foreseen the history of the next 
half-century, he would have seen these two youths, utterly 
unlike and mutually uncongenial, competitors for the great 
ofifice of President — Adams once, and Jackson twice, suc- 
cessful. He would have seen in Jackson the most popular 
American from Jefferson to Lincoln. 

There were other boys who became famous Americans, 
but these were the boys in Washington's time whose lives 
were to affect most deeply the course of letters and politics 
in this country. They were boys who won their own way 
:n the world. 

The seven long years' struggle for independence was a 
powerful agency in breaking down many class distinctions 
characteristic of colonial life, and in breeding a comradeship 



1776-1800] POLITICS 321 

that the country needed. In a letter written in 1798, 
Jefferson describes the Federalists as aristocrats. The 
party never enrolled the mass of the people. Its leaders 
were admired, rather than trusted. Washington was never 
as popular with the rnasses as JefTerson became later. The 
Federalist party, during its career of a dozen years, enrolled 
the "well-born," the merchants and the bankers. The 
Democrats were farmers, laboring-men, the ambitious 
youths who were born poor and obscure, like Jackson, or 
who were foreigners, like Albert Gallatin. It was the party 
of leather breeches; the Federalists were the party of silk 
waistcoats and silver knee-buckles. 

Jefferson believed in "the rights of man," a term rather 
vague, but useful in political campaigns. He told the 
laborer, the mechanic, the frontiersman, that he ought to 
vote, and hold office if he wanted to, and above all things 
he ought to have his rights and help govern the country. 
Why, then, support the Federalists, who wanted to muzzle 
free speech and a free press by their sedition law? Why 
vote for a rich man, who would not know you after election 
day if you met him face to face? Why tamely submit to 
a stamp tax and a house tax and a land tax, when the war 
had been fought to abolish such evils? Why pay the Presi- 
dent twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and work yourself 
for twenty-five cents a day? Why let the East hold all 
the offices and the West pay most of the taxes? It was 
time for the West to have its share. Had not John Adams 
signed commissions till after midnight of the last day of 
his term simply to give his friends fat offices for life at the 
expense of the taxpayers? Away with such a party. And 
the elections in 1800, "the land-slide of the Federalists," 
were the result.* 

In nearly all the states the qualifications for voting 
remained as they were before 1776. The Federalists did 
not favor an extension of the suffrage. The Democrats 
advocated it, but had no opportunity to carry out their 

*One particular object of Democratic attack was " The Society of 
the Cincinnati," formed in 1783 by the officers of the American army to 
perpetuate good feeling among them and their descendants and to 
extend aid to any of them or their families in distress. 



332 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [1776 -1800 

ideas except in Kentucky and Tennessee, the two new 
states in the West. There they rejected religious quahfi- 
cations. Kentucky required the voter to be a free white 
man; Tennessee required him to be also a freeholder. But 
the old practice of requiring ownership of fifty acres of land 
or more was not followed in the West. 

With the approach of the Revolution and throughout 
the struggle many leaders of the people emerged from 
among them. Irrefragable proof of the profound meaning 
of the Revolution is given by the sudden appearance, the 
lofty character, and the immeasurable services of these 
men. They remain first and foremost in our annals, and 
seem to have given us all that we most deeply cherish. 
More has been said and written about them than any other 
Americans. They are the Fathers of the Republic. A 
hypercritical age, more concerned over its manners and 
amusements than its morals, has produced a cult of writers 
who please themselves and their readers by depicting 
"true" George Washingtons and Benjamin Franklins, 
dragging forth the human weaknesses of men as the true 
test of their strength. But the world rolls on through 
space; men come and go, and books pass into oblivion, and 
the Cromwells remain on the canvas, "wart and all." 

Safe now for a century and more behind the ramparts of 
the Republic, some boldly venture to criticise the strategy 
and tactics of Washington, or the secret motives of Frank- 
lin and Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson. It is all well, for 
these and their peers among their colleagues stand the test. 
No man among those who gained the confidence of the 
American people and retained it from 1776 to 1800 has lost 
his place in the Hall of Fame. A century's research has 
not diminished or darkened the luster of their names. The 
names of Henry and Otis, and Gadsden and Peyton, and 
Hopkins and Blair, and Wythe and Morris are as familiar 
to us now as they were to their generation. The sayings 
of Franklin and Jefferson, of Adams and Pinckney, of 
Hamilton and Washington passed long since into the com- 
mon speech of the Republic, and the ideas of these men 
are ever present in its ideals and public administration. 

Thus the great Americans of the Revolutionary period 



1776-1800] THE CHURCHES 323 

seem to belong to all time, and at the mere mention of their 
names their familiar figures stand before us. It was they 
who first fixed our standards in public affairs. 

The period from 1776 to 1800 was one of great religious 
activity. The Revolution broke down forever much of that 
spirit of intolerance which had so long ruled in America. 
Bishop Asbury, the first American bishop of the Methodist 
Episcopal church, opened the first Sunday school in Vir- 
ginia in 1786, and in the same year St. Peter's, the first 
Roman Catholic church, was erected in New York City. 
Two years later, mass was heard for the first time in Bos- 
ton, and in 1789 the first convention of the "Protestant 
Episcopal church in 'the United States of America" was 
held in Philadelphia. In that year, also, the first American 
bishop of the Roman Catholic church in America was con- 
secrated in Baltimore. Through the West went many 
preachers from New England, who met the people in vast 
camp-meetings. About the first things done when a new 
town was founded were to make a "church-bee" and build 
a meeting-house, a "school-bee" and build a "free school," 
and then select sites for a court-house and a jail. 

In 1776, wooden pipes were laid in the streets of New 
York to convey water from a reservoir on the east side of 
Broadway, near Pearl Street. The supply was pumped 
from wells. In 1777, nails cut from cold iron were for 
the first time thus manufactured at Cumberland, Rhode 
Island. Some Hessians who had deserted from the British 
army began the manufacture of glass in 1780, in Temple, 
New Hampshire. Two years later, a firm in Philadelphia 
began manufacturing fustians and jeans. Louis XIV. was 
fond of gardening, and in 1785 sent the eminent botanist 
Michaux to the United States to collect trees and shrubs. 
He brought with him a few Lombardy poplars, which were 
among the earliest seen in this country. 

A cotton-mill, the first in the United States, was started 
in Beverley, Massachusetts, in 1787, for the manufacture of 
corduroys and bedticks. This factory failed, but four 
years later the skillful Samuel Slater, of Pawtucket, Rhode 
Island, began the successful manufacture of cotton in New 
England. In 1793, he started the first cotton-yarn mill at 



324 THE WAYS OF IllI': NEW NA'i'lON [1776-1800 

New Providence. In 1787, the manufacture of salt, on 
quite an extensive scale, was begun at Syracuse. The 
exportation of cotton began in 1785 ; one bag was sent from 
Charleston, one from New York, and twelve from Philadel- 
phia. Over four thousand million pounds are now annually 
produced, and over two-thirds of this are exported. In 
1790, the manufacture of brooms began, in Philadelphia; 
brooms had been made for a long time in the homes of the 
people for their own use. 

In 1788, the first dentist's ofifice in this country was 
opened in New York. The proper treatment of teeth was 
quite unknown. People went to the doctor or the barber 
to have their teeth pulled. The false teeth made at that 
time were a curiosity — and we may add, they would be 
now. 

In 1790, on the 5th of June, people living along the 
Delaware were astonished to see a boat propelletl by steam 
run from Philadelphia to Trenton in thirteen hours, up- 
stream and against a strong wind and a strong tide. It was 
the steamboat (for it had no other name) invented by John 
Fitch. For four months it ran back and forth, stopping at 
intermediate points. It ran up one day and down the next. 
The fare was five shillings from Philadelphia to Trenton. 
Fitch was ahead of his time. His boat did not pay. He 
was neglected, wandered West, and died a suicide. 

While hunting deer in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, a 
man named (liinther accidentally discovered a bed of anthra- 
cite coal. The Lehigh Coal Mine Company was formed in 
Philadelphia, and coal was put on the market. But no one 
knew how to use it. Because it would not burn, it was 
called "stone-coal." Nearly thirty years passed before it 
came into general use. At the time of its discovery, houses 
were warmed by vast open fires of wood. Stoves were not 
yet in common use. Even the Franklin stove was a luxury. 
A coal stove was yet to be invented. 

The Insurance Company of North America, the first of 
its kind, was established in Philadelphia in 1794. People 
thought it was "tempting Providence" to insure against 
fire and lightning, but they have quite abandoned this 
superstition. The fire insurance companies of the United 



1776-iSoo] NEWSPAPERS 325 

States now pay in fire losses more every year than the 
amount of the entire national debt in Washington's time. 
The first manufacture of cane sugar was carried on near New 
Orleans in 1796, and in the same year the first manufacture 
of morocco leather was undertaken at Lynn, Massachusetts. 
Great Britain would not allow the colonists to make even a 
straw hat. It was not till 1798, while the alien and sedition 
laws were the chief product of Congress, that straw-braid 
for hats and bonnets was made at Dedham, Massachusetts. 
This is a long list of industries, and shows that the Ameri- 
cans were fast becoming, industrially as well as politically, 
independent of the rest of the world. 

When Washington was President, everybody who voted 
for him did not ask for a post-of^ce. There were only 
seventy-five to distribute. To-day there are nearly seventy- 
five thousand. The people then used the post-office about 
as freely as they now use the Atlantic cable. Postage 
varied with the distance and was not required to be pre- 
paid. Adhesive postage-stamps were not yet invented. 
The amount due was written by the postmaster on the 
folded letter, and was collected upon delivery. Envelopes 
were not known. Nothing but letters could be sent by 
mail. The receipt of a letter was an event in a man's life, 
and he handed it to the editor to be printed for the infor- 
mation of the community. As newspapers could not be 
mailed, the post-boys were paid by the printer to distribute 
the papers. Sometimes a rival editor would bribe him to 
throw the lot into the river or the mill-pond. Then the two 
editors had something to say in their papers. Finally the 
public began to demand that their newspapers be sent them 
through the mails. 

The wealthy and aristocratic families in the large towns 
formed an exclusive social set. They gave balls and assem- 
blies, entertained in handsome style, kept horses and car- 
riages, and lived much as the same class does to-day. 
Farmers' wives had "quilting-bees" and sewing-circles; 
their husbands and children joined them in ' husking- 
bees, " and the young folks had "paring-bees," to secure 
the proper supply of dried apples for the winter. Berries, 
apples, pears, pumpkins, and citron were dried and pre- 



326 THE WAYS OF THE NEW NATION [1776-1S00 

ser\'ed. The art of canning was not yet discovered. Pop- 
corn, cider, molasses-candy, and apples were the usual 
refreshments at social evening gatherings. The cellar was 
well stocked with farm produce, and the boys could always 
find apples to pick over and potatoes to sort. Plenty of 
either could be had at six cents a bushel. 

In the fall the farmer, and the townsman, too, "put 
down" a barrel of beef and another of pork and lived on salt 
meat all winter. In the spring it was quite the fashion to 
drink quantities of cleansing beverages stewed from elder- 
berr}', sassafras, wormwood, tansy, camomile, and boneset. 
In the fall, the good housewife gathered bundles of these 
roots and herbs in the old of the moon, also pennyroyal 
and catnip and peppermint and lobelia, and carefully hung 
them in the attic for instant use. A dose of nature, cat- 
nip, and mother was far safer than the ordinary village 
doctor's pills. But people lived in spite of their salt pork 
and wormwood, and that, after all, is the main thing. 

With prosperity came migration, business speculations, 
and, as usual, new and finer houses. Whatever we may 
say of the ten thousand things our ancestors did not have 
from 1776 to 1800, we must admit that some of them had 
beautiful old colonial mansions — a notable American contri- 
bution to the architecture of the home. In New England, 
where the stones lay thick as leaves in the forest, the man- 
sion w^as of stone or wood ; in the middle colonies, where 
stones were deeper underground and clay was plentiful, 
they were often of brick; in the South, they were of brick 
or wood. 

Colonial architecture has been revived in recent years, 
and it is enough to say that the colonial style of building 
suggests home comforts which appeal powerfully to an 
American. 

It has been said that the character of a nation may be 
learned from its treatment of the unfortunate and criminal 
classes. America, tested by this standard through the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century-, must be judged low 
down in the scale. The Constitution forbids cruel and 
unusual punishments, a provision which, though it may 
seem to some quite superfluous, is a witness that such 



17 76-iSoo] RANK OV TllK STATES 327 

punishments were once commonly inflicted. Imprisonment 
for debt was common, and the cause of terrible suffering 
among the poor. Prisoners were turned loose into a com- 
mon room, without distinction of sex or age or degree, or 
kind of ofTense. A jail of Washington's time would not 
now be tolerated. Lunatics were whipped and sewed up 
in strait-jackets. The deaf and the dumb received no help. 
The feeble-minded were sent to the poorhouse. So terrible 
a place was the poorhouse that to this day people shudder 
at the thought of being obliged to close their lives there, 
though now the county-house is usually a comfortable home. 
Undoubtedly Itfe in America from 1776 to 1800 was in 
many ways coarser and less humane than it is to-day. 

During the ten years ending with 1800, population 
increased to five and a third millions (5,308,483). The 
relative distribution north and south of Mason and Dixon's 
line was twenty-seven persons north to twenty-six south, 
and the order of the states in population changed. Vir- 
ginia was first, Pennsylvania second. New York third, 
Massachusetts fourth. North Carolina fifth. South Carolina 
sixth, Maryland seventh, Connecticut eighth. The remain- 
ing states, in their order, were Kentucky, New Jersey, New 
Hampshire, Georgia, Vermont, Tennessee, Rhode Island, 
and Delaware. Ohio had forty-five thousand people, nearly 
enough by the ordinance of 1787 to admit it into the 
Union. 

It will be noticed that the states that had gained most 
were: Pennsylvania, from third place to second ; New York, 
from fifth place to third ; Georgia, from eleventh place to 
tenth; Kentucky, from thirteenth to ninth; and Tennessee, 
from sixteenth to fourteenth. Ohio had gained almost its 
entire population during these ten years. Over two hun- 
dred and sixty thousand people had migrated to Ohio, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee during this time. This migration 
shows the restlessness of the times, and helps us understand 
the power of Jefferson's appeal to the West. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE RUIN OF AMERICAN COMMERCE 
1801-1812 

On the 4th of March, 1801, Jefferson was inaugurated 
in Washington. Not only was he the first President to 
assume office there, but his inauguration meant that a great 
change had come over the country. The nineteenth cen- 
tury opened with the Democratic Republican party in power 
in most of the states. Instead of nineteen Federalists and 
thirteen Democrats in the Senate, there were now nineteen 
Democrats and thirteen Federalists. In the House there 
were seventy-one Democrats and thirty-four Federalists. 
During the next sixty years (till Lincoln was elected Presi- 
dent) the Democrats controlled Congress, except in four 
Congresses.* So practically the party which Jefferson 
organized, and which elected him in 1800, was in power 
sixty years. 

Jefferson was a remarkable man. After graduating 
from William and Mary College, he read law with Chancellor 
Wythe, and soon obtained a lucrative practice. He was 
familiar with Latin and Greek, French and Spanish. He 
gave great attention to practical botany, to architecture, 
to science, and to philosophy. He regularly received all 
important books on these subjects published in Europe, 
and his library was said to be the most complete in America. 
He was a keen observer of nature, and kept a daily record 
of the weather, of the markets, and of the growth of various 
plants and their habits. He was profoundly versed in the 
principles of law and government. He possessed great 
mechanical skill, played the violin well, was a bold horse- 
man, and was a master of the rifle. He wrote the Decla- 
ration of Independence and founded the University of 

* House, Whig (1838-40); Senate and House, Whig (1840-42); House, 
Republican (1854-56; 1858-60). 

328 



i8oi] DEMOCRATIC REFORMS 329 

Virginia. He had, perhaps, too much confidence in human 
nature. His rehgious ideas were liberal; his friendships 
wide and deep, and his personal following greater than that 
of any other man in our history. He would have been a 
leader of men in any age or country. Though differing 
from him at every point in politics, Hamilton at the critical 
moment gave him his influence and elected him President 
over Aaron Burr. To-day no name is more familiar to us 
than JeiTerson's. His birthday is celebrated by annual 
banquets; Washington's, by a national holiday. Such cele- 
brations signify that the ideas of these two men are living, 
powerful forces in the world to-day. But many Americans 
distrusted Jefferson in 1801, as others had distrusted Wash- 
ington seven years before. Instead of delivering a long 
speech to Congress once a year, as Washington and Adams 
had done, Jefferson sent a written message, and his success- 
ors have followed his example. 

The Democrats repealed the alien and sedition acts, cut 
down the navy and army, reduced salaries, abolished inter- 
nal taxes, and in every way put into practice a favorite 
theory of theirs, that of a government "economically 
administered." The Federalists complained that this was 
all accomplished at the expense of efficiency. However, 
the new party could tell the people that they had reduced 
the national debt nearly forty million dollars in eight years.* 
Jefferson was his own adviser; his cabinet was capable, but 
more like a clerical body than a directive force in admin- 
istration. He believed, and as far as possible put in prac- 
tice, the following ideas: All ofifices should be elective and 
for a term of years. The term should be short. As many 
new men should be appointed as possible, so as to train the 
people in government. Expenses should be cut down. The 
annual revenue was $10,800,000 in 1801, the annual ex- 
pense $3,500,000, leaving $6,300,000 to apply on the debt. 
America should preserve neutrality in its foreign policy. 

The army was reduced from four thousand to two thou- 
sand five hundred; fortifications in course of erection and 
ships on the stocks were abandoned. Of the thirteen frig- 
ates left in the navy, only six were in commission. The 

*i8oi-i8oQ. 



330 RUIN OF AMERICAN COMMERCE [iSoo-iSoj 

revenue from customs increased so that the loss from the 
abolition of the internal taxes was not felt. 

By treaties with Morocco. Algiers. Tunis, and Tripoli 
(i7S7-97\ the United Stvites agreed to pay tribute to these 
piratical powers as the price for trading in the Mediter- 
ranean. In iSoo. Tripoli demanded more, and declared 
war. Jefferson had to fight. War was declared in 1802, 
but our navy was wholly unsuitable. Ships had to be 
built — much to the joy of the Federalists. Commodore 
Preble thoroughly concluded the business of American trib- 
ute to the Barbar>' powers, and these exactions came to an 
end in 1S06. 

B\' a secret treaty, Spain in iSoo ceded Louisiana west 
of the Mississippi to France. This vastly important trans- 
action became known to Jefferson early in 1802. Me 
showed a correct appreciation of the interests of the United 
States when he said that the power that controlled Xew 
Orleans and the Mississippi River was the "natural enemy" 
of the United States. Napoleon's plans respecting Louisi- 
ana were, presumably, its occupation by French troops and 
a pemianent tribute on all American commerce on the great 
river. The West, from Pittsburg to the Floridas, recognized 
its danger, and urged the immediate seizure of Xew Orleans. 
But Jefferson had a wiser plan. He would offer to buy both 
West Florida and Xew Orleans, and with consent of Congress 
he sent James Monroe to aid Robert R. Livingston, our min- 
ister to France, in the purchase. The day before Monroe 
reached Paris. Livingston had by treaty secured all Louisi- 
ana from Xapoleon for fifteen million dollars. 

This unexpected turn of affairs was caused by Xapo- 
leon's war with England, and particularly by the utter fail- 
ure of his expedition to San Domingo. He had abandoned 
all plans for American colonization before Monroe arrived, 
and to cripple England, into whose hands Louisiana might 
fall, he detennined to sell it to the United States. The 
treaty of cession, April 30, 1S03, added 1,182.752 square 
miles to the L'nited States, at a cost, when all payments 
and claims were settled, of less than four cents an acre. 
It remains the largest real-estate transaction in our histor)-. 
and the greatest event in Jefferson's administration. On 



iSo3-iSii| LOUISIANA: OREGON 331 

tho JOth ot December, the Stars and Stripes were raised in 
New Orleans, "amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants." 
and the vast Louisiana country became American soil. 

Except along the Mississippi from St. Louis to the 
Floridas, the countr}^ was as little known to white men as 
on the day Columbus landed. The treaty named no defi- 
nite boundaries, because none were known. Somewhere in 
the new country — as Jefferson told Congress in a special 
message — there was a mountain, "said to be one hundred 
and eighty miles long and forty-five in width, composed of 
solid rock-salt." which, by the wa\-, would be a deal of salt, 
what Bassanio would call "an infinite deal." Jefferson 
was too good a scientist to vouch for this mountain. The 
new country- attracted him, and in May, 1804. he succeeded 
in starting ^leriweather Lewis and William Clarke, at public 
expense, to explore it. At that time they left St. Louis, 
ascended the Missouri, spent the winter with the Dacotah 
Indians, near Bismarck, North Dakota, then followed the 
river to its source. Crossing the divide, they floated down 
the Clear Water to the Columbia, which brought them, in 
November, 1S05. to the sea. They returned to St. Louis 
in the following year, and later reported their continental 
journey to Congress and the President. Nor was this all. 
Zebulon Pike, sent to find the headwaters of the Missis- 
sippi, in 1S05. missed them, but continuing his explorations 
in 1S06, discovered, ascended, and named the great peak 
in Colorado, passed to the southwest, suffered terrible hard- 
ships, was made a prisoner by the Spaniards, but at last 
reached home. 

Beyond Louisiana lay California and the Oregon coun- 
try. As early as 179-. Captain Robert Gray, in the ship 
Columbia, discovered the river to which he gave the name 
of his ship. Gray spent nine days in exploring it, and thus 
established the claim of the L^nited States to all the coun- 
try it drained. In 181 1. John Jacob Astor established a 
trading-post at Astoria. What Gray had discovered and 
Lewis and Clark had explored was now utilized by the 
Pacific Fur Company, which Astor founded. A few settle- 
ments were made. 

Meanwhile war between England and France was fiercely 



332 RUIN OF AMERICAN COMMERCE [1804-1805 

raging, and in spite of our policy of neutrality we were the 
sufferers. Had we been a strong nation, neither William 
Pitt, son of that William Pitt at the head of the govern- 
ment when Washington and Braddock started for Fort 
Duquesne, and now Prime Minister of England, nor Napo- 
leon, now Emperor of the French, would have dared to 
treat us as they did. Pitt wanted to keep all American 
supplies from France; Napoleon wanted to shut them out 
of England, and Jefferson had an idea that they were 
essential to both and that by withholding them we could 
practically dictate terms to both powers. In the end all 
throe schemes failed. 

For a dozen years American merchants had been getting 
cargoes in the French West Indies, bringing them into 
American ports, paying the duty, and then, without unload- 
ing, taking them to France. By our law ninety-seven per 
cent of the custom charges were paid back. This practi- 
cally amounted to a direct trade between the French colo- 
nies and France in American ships. Napoleon liked it, but 
the British court of admiralty, in May, 1805, handed down 
a decision that goods thus transported were "contraband 
of war," and could be seized wherever found by English 
ships. The British government at once carried the decision 
into effect by overhauling American merchantmen and 
impressing our seamen. Though we were at peace with 
England. British gunboats were stationed off our ports to 
make«such seizures. In 1S04, thirty-nine American vessels 
were seized ; before another year closed, the British had 
taken one hundred and sixteen of our vessels and upwards 
of one thousand of our seamen. Nelson's victory at Tra- 
falgar made England mistress of the sea. We had no navy ; 
we could only expostulate. 

In November, 1804. Jefferson was re-elected, and 
George Clinton was chosen Vice-President The Twelfth 
Amendment had become a part of the Constitution on the 
25th of September, thus preventing a tie vote, in the future, 
such as had been cast in 1800. Jefferson and Clinton 
received 162 electoral votes, Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus 
King, the Federalist candidates 14. The legislatures chose 
the electors in six states, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, 



1S06-1S07] ENGLISH AND FRENCH HECREES 333 

Delaware, South Carolina, and Gcort:^ia. Ohio, the seven- 
teenth state, was admitted November 29, 180J. 

Napoleon in 1806 closed the ports of France and her 
dependencies against all English goods. Pitt responded. 
May 16, 1806, by declaring the coast of Europe blockaded 
from the Elbe in the north to Brest in the south. Napo- 
leon retaliated on the 21st of November by issuing a decree 
from Berlin, that the British Isles were blockaded. Now 
it is a principle of international law that a blockade that is 
not, and cannot be. enforced, a mere "paper blockade," 
will not stand. But though France had no ships to guard 
the coast of England, nor had England a sufficient fleet to 
patrol the coast of the Continent, our ships going to either 
region were liable to capture, and many were captured. In 
brief, we were shut off from all Europe. 

Pitt replied by an order in council, in January, 1807, 
declaring all neutral ships, trading between French ports 
subject to capture, and every French port blockaded. 
IMoreover, where a British vessel could not go, no neutral 
could go, in any part of the world. 

Then Napoleon issued from Milan, in December, 1807, 
a decree that struck the last blow. Any neutral ship that 
suffered an Englishman to search it, or that presumed to 
enter any port in the world that a French vessel could not 
enter, should be seized and confiscated. 

Now, if an American has followed this succession of 
decrees, he may ask, "Where, then, could an American 
ship trade with safety?" Nowhere, because it might be 
captured by an English or a French warship, when engaged 
in the coast trade from Maine to Louisiana. Before the 
year 1807 was over, as the result of Napoleon's decrees and 
Pitt's orders in council, one hundred and ninety-four Ameri- 
can ships were seized by the English — many off our own 
shores — and nearly as many by the French. We were in a 
fair way of being without a ship or a sailor before long. 
Meanwhile, in 1806, the Jay treaty with England expired. 
We were practically a blockaded nation. 

Before explaining the President's policy, let us learn 
what the American people thought of the situation. War 
means waste. England and France were sorelv in need of 



334 RUIN OF AMERICAN COMMERCE [1806 

supplies of every kind. If an American ship, by good luck, 
ran either blockade, it made a handsome profit. A cargo 
meant a possible fortune, and hundreds of American mer- 
chants willingly ran the risk. Most of the ships were owned 
in New England; and though this part of the country suf- 
fered most, there was not an insistent demand for war in 
that quarter. France controlled Spain, and Spain owned 
Florida, a country which Jefferson wished to buy as he had 
bought Louisiana; therefore he was blind to many French 
spoliations. But toward England he had no such tender 
feeling. He therefore adopted a threefold policy: to put 
the country into a state of defense, to make a new treaty 
with England, and to exclude all manufactured goods com- 
ing from England or her colonies. 

The first was his "gunboat" policy. From 1806 to 
1 8 12, one hundred and seventy-six gunboats were built 
for our coast defense. Each was a small, rakish craft with 
one gun at the stern. In time of war, they were to crush 
the enemy; in time of peace, they should be hauled on shore 
and covered over with sheds. They cost the government 
one million seven hundred thousand dollars. If they did 
not harm the enemy, they furnished a great deal of merri- 
ment for the Federalists. 

Jefferson, in December, 1806, sent James Monroe, and 
William Pinckney of Maryland, to England to negotiate 
a new treaty. They brought back one which allowed the 
impressment of our seamen and denied the American doc- 
trine that free ships make free goods. Jefferson did not 
even send a copy to the Senate. So we were left without 
a treaty with England, and she consulted her own pleasure 
in the matter of searches and seizures. 

Jefferson's "non-importation" scheme resulted in an 
act of Congress, of April, 1806, which empowered him to 
prohibit trade with Great Britain and her colonies at his 
pleasure, but the act was enforced only seven weeks. 

English sailors were constantly deserting her ships and 
joining American crews. On a June day in 1807, the frig- 
ate Chesapeake was on her way down the Potomac, on a 
cruise to the Mediterranean. Commodore Barron did not 
know that there were several British deserters on board. 



iSog] THE EMBARGO 335 

He had just passed the capes, when suddenly the British 
ship Leopard bore down upon him, and hailing, sent an 
officer and a boat's crew to search the Chesapeake for 
deserters. Barron refused to permit the search, whereupon 
the Leopard opened fire. The American was wholly unpre- 
pared and surrendered. Four men were carried away, three 
being American citizens. Three sailors were killed, eighteen 
lay wounded. The Leopard went on her way. The Chesa- 
peake turned back to Washington with the news. Public 
excitement would have supported a declaration of war. 
But Jefferson had another scheme. 

He issued a proclamation ordering every British ship 
to leave American waters. He summoned Congress in 
extra session, in October 1807. An embargo was laid on 
American shipping. Not a merchantman, sailing under 
any flag, could have clearance papers or leave an American 
port till the President should suspend the act. Ship-owners 
who for years had run the risk of ruin by venturing a cargo 
abroad, now saw themselves ruined by being compelled to 
keep their cargoes at home. The alternative was too great 
a temptation, and the embargo act was systematically evaded 
from the first. Smuggling became a fine art. American 
flour, bacon, pork, lumber, rice, got to Europe by way of 
Florida and Canada. Congress amended the law by more 
stringent provisions, and passed a force act in 1809, but to 
little purpose. Smuggling went on. After fourteen months 
of wearisome trial, the embargo acts were repealed, Feb- 
ruary 9, 1809. JefTerson was confident, however, that the 
embargo would bring England to terms. 

The effects of the embargo were disastrous. In Eng- 
land it cut off trade to the extent of twenty-five million 
dollars and compelled a lowering of wages. British mer- 
chants asked the government to withdraw its orders in 
council. In France, Napoleon ordered every American 
vessel to be seized as lawful booty, since it was forbidden 
by act of Congress to leave home. In America, the embargo 
ruined trade, destroyed the market, left the farmers and 
planters with their crops on their hands, cut down customs 
from sixteen millions to seven millions, and practically 
ruined business. 



336 RUIN OF AMERICAN COMMERCE [1810 

In New England, there was an angry public sentiment 
towards the government. A non-intercourse law now took 
the place of the embargo act. Jefferson signed it, and thus 
confessed that the critical part of his policy, as President, 
had been a failure. 

Like Washington, Jefferson declined a third term, and 
thus contributed to establish a presidential practice. His 
refusal to serve, though eight states through their legisla- 
tures, nearly half the Union, had invited him to do so, left 
.the Republicans without a candidate. A caucus of mem- 
bers of Congress of the party formally named James Madi- 
son and George Clinton. Pinckney and King were again 
nominated by the Federalists. Of the electoral votes, 
Madison received 122, Clinton 113, Pinckney and King 47 
each. James Monroe received three votes, and the ven- 
erable John Langdon, of New Hampshire, nine. The elec- 
tors were chosen by the legislatures of six states, as in 1804. 
Madison had been Secretary of State with Jefferson. He 
now called Monroe to that ofifice. Madison "followed in 
the footsteps of Jefferson." 

In 1809, Congress repealed the non-intercourse act, 
which, like the embargo, had failed. American merchants 
could now trade with England and France, but the old 
decrees were in force between them. Congress went so far 
as to say that we would trade exclusively with the country 
that would rescind its orders or decrees.* Napoleon now 
agreed to withdraw his decrees on these terms, November 
10, 1 8 10. Tvladison thereupon gave notice that we would 
stop all trade with England, if she did not rescind her 
orders within four months. Napoleon's withdrawal of his 
decrees was only a drag-net for American cargoes. He 
drew the ropes to his net on Christmas Day, seizing all 
American vessels in French ports. He caught merchandise 
worth ten million dollars. Thus England would not recall 
her orders, and Napoleon had violated the law of nations. 

Pinckney, our minister to England, demanded his pass- 
ports and came home. The outrage done the Chesapeake 
was still unsettled. England sent another minister, replaced 

*This was the "Macon Bill," and surrendered every principle at 
issue. 



i8o9-i8ii] WAR DECLARED 337 

the three Americans on the deck of that ship (she had 
hanged the fourth sailor as a deserter), and began to talk 
peace. 

While the British minister at Washington was talking 
peace, the Guerriere, a British frigate, overhauled an Ameri- 
can merchantman just entering New York Bay and impress- 
ed an American citizen. As soon as this was reported to 
Madison, he ordered Captain Rogers of the President to 
find the Guerriere and demand the man. He fell in with a 
British ship, in the dark, compelled her surrender, and dis- 
covered at dawn that he had captured the Little Belt, a 
British frigate of twenty-two guns. Great was the popular 
rejoicing as the news flew over the country. All this 
occurred in May, 181 1. 

The long pent-up exasperation of the people was relieved 
by the election of the twelfth Congress. No sooner was it 
convened in November, than memorials poured in from all 
over the country, asking for retaliatory measures. The 
debates soon disclosed that it was a war Congress. Among 
the new members of the House were John C. Calhoun 
and Henry Clay, and Clay, though scarcely of age, was 
chosen Speaker. His voice, the voice of the West, was 
for war. On the i8th of June, 18 12, war was declared 
against England. The war bill was the work of John C. 
Calhoun. 

For several years the Indians in the Northwest Terri- 
tory had been restless. Twin brothers, Tecumseh and the 
Prophet, of the Shawnee tribe, had aroused a widespread 
excitement among all the tribes. A vast Indian confeder- 
ation was planned. In September, 1809, General Harrison, 
by treaty at Fort Wayne, obtained a cession of nearly three 
million acres to the United States. Tecumseh and the 
Prophet declared the cession void, and hostilities began. 
Harrison discovered that the hostile tribes had been secretly 
approached by British agents and that the brothers had 
been encouraged by them to make war against the United 
States. On November 7th, a great battle was fought at 
the Prophet's town of Tippecanoe. Harrison won a vic- 
tory, but dearly. Tecumseh and his brother now joined 
the British in Canada. But the settlers in the Northwest 



338 RUIN OF' AMERICAN COMMERCE [1812 

breathed freely. Harrison had forever freed the Ohio 
country from the fear of an Indian outbreak. Immigration 
at once turned toward the late Indian lands. Clay and the 
other western members were thinking of Tecumseh and the 
frontier when they had urged war with England. 

On June i, 18 12, Madison had sent a message to 
Congress which declared the causes for war: The impress- 
ment of thousands of American citizens, the "sweeping 
system of blockades" which had "plundered our commerce 
in every sea," and "the warfare just renewed by the sav- 
ages on one of our extensive frontiers" due to "British 
traders and garrisons." British cruisers had been in the 
practice of violating the rights and the peace of our coasts. 
They hovered over and harassed our entering and depart- 
ing commerce. "On the side of Great Britain," he said, 
there existed "a state of war against the United States, 
and on the side of the United States, a state of peace 
toward Great Britain." 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 
1812-1815 

The population of the United States in 1812 was about 
8,000,000; that of England, about 20,000,000. Our annual 
revenue was $9,000,000; hers was $350,000,000. The war 
cost us $30,000,000 a year, so that we were obliged to go 
in debt about $98,000,000. England, in 181 5, had a debt 
of $4,300,000,000, which was not felt as a burden. Our 
loans were at a discount, because our financial system was 
not settled, and Congress had refused to recharter the 
United States Bank in 181 1. In England the war, whether 
against Napoleon or America, was very popular. 

We were a divided people. The Federalists opposed 
the war, nicknamed it "Madison's War," and gave the 
government a lukewarm support. Something of the spirit 
of faction is suggested by a speech of a Federalist, Josiah 
Quincy, of Massachusetts, in Congress, when the bill to 
admit Louisiana into the Union was under discussion in 
181 1. "If this bill passes," said he, "it is my deliberate 
opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that 
it will free the states from their moral obligation; and as 
it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, 
definitely to prepare for a separation ; amicably, if they can, 
violently, if they must." This was going further than the 
Kentucky resolutions of 1799. 

The regular American army consisted of six thou- 
sand seven hundred men. So unpopular was the ser- 
vice that the government offered pardons to deserters if 
they would return. During the war, the army became 
thirty-four thousand men, including ofificers. The Brit- 
ish army was commanded by officers of whom Welling- 
ton was chief. Ours was commanded by civilians and 
by aged Revolutionary heroes, mostly as incapable as they 

339 



340 SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1812 

were infirm. The younger and abler men were given no 
chance. 

Our navy consisted of twelve vessels, of which the frig- 
ates Constitution, President, and United States, each of 44 
guns, were the largest. Our navy was manned by 5,500 
sailors, of whom 1,500 were marines. The English navy 
consisted of 830 vessels, manned by 150,000 seamen, and 
had power to impress without limit. Of these vessels, 230 
were larger than our largest. Moreover, England had been 
at war so long, her fleets were in perfect training and equip- 
ment. 

The war might be called "The English and Indian 
War," for it was fought over much of the ground of the 
old French wars, and Indians fought on both sides. It 
was bound to rage along our frontiers and our coasts, and 
sea-fights were likely to occur in any quarter of the world. 

Could a cablegram have been sent from London to 
Washington on the 23d of June, 1812, just five days after 
Congress had declared war, Madison would have been noti- 
fied that the odious orders in council had been rescinded. 
Commissioners would have been appointed and war pre- 
vented. Again, after a treaty was signed, two years and 
a half later, a cablegram would have prevented the battle 
of New Orleans. If science makes war more destructive, 
it also helps people and nations adjust their differences. 

In November, 18 12, Madison was re-elected President, 
receiving 128 electoral votes, and Elbridge Gerry Vice- 
President, receiving 131. They had been nominated by a 
congressional caucus. In similar way, the Federalists 
nominated De Witt Clinton, of New York, and Jared 
Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania. Clinton received 89 electoral 
votes; Ingersoll, 86. Louisiana, admitted April 30th, the 
eighteenth state, chose its electors by legislature, as did the 
six states that thus chose them in 1808. Congress was 
overwhelmingly Democratic. 

As to a deliberate, carefully chosen, well-supported, and 
well-conducted plan of war, in 1812, we had none. The 
regular army was only a squad. The state militia were not 
in hearty co-operation with the general government. Most 
of the land-fights were in the wilderness, along the frontier. 



i8i2] THE PLAN OF WAR 341 

But viewing its military events as a whole, this was the 
"plan of war" : to invade Canada; to drive the English and 
their Indian allies out of the Northwest (Michigan, Ohio, 
Illinois, Wisconsin, as the country now is); to drive the 
British from the Great Lakes; to keep the Indians quiet in 
the Southwest; to destroy British commerce; to fight Eng- 
lish men-of-war wherever found, and to defend our Atlantic 
coast. So the war was offensive by sea and defensive by land. 

In the summer of 1813, Oliver H. Perry built a fleet at 
Erie, Pennsylvania. He launched it in September; bore 
immediately up the lake in search of the British squadron, 
caught sight of it near Cleveland; ran up on his flagship, 
the Lawrence, a pennant with the motto, "Don't give up 
the ship" ; boldly attacked the two largest of the enemy's 
fleet; lost his own ship; coolly changed to the Niagara in 
the heat of battle; broke the line of the enemy; captured 
his entire fleet, and on the loth of September sent the 
famous message to General Harrison, "We have met the 
enemy, and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one 
schooner, and one sloop." Evidently the British had 
struck another one of those Americans whom Washington 
would call a "fighter. " Perry's victory settled the ques- 
tion on the lakes. 

In 1 8 12, Captain Lawrence, of the Constitution, met 
the notorious Guerriere, and after a brief contest, sent her 
to the bottom. The United States brought in the Mace- 
donian as a prize. In 18 13, the Constitution captured the 
Java: the Hornet sent the Peacock to the bottom of the 
sea; the Enterprise brought the Boxer into Portland har- 
bor. But the Chesapeake struck to the Shannon ; the 
Argus, which had "carried the war into Africa," by de- 
stroying more than twenty ships in the English Channel, 
struck to the Pelican. The motto which Perry had put on 
his pennant referred to a terrible battle between the Chesa- 
peake and the Shannon, which had challenged the former 
to a fight off Boston. Lawrence, though not fully prepared, 
accepted. "Don't give up the ship," he whispered, as mor- 
tally wounded and defeated he was carried below by his men. 

Never before had the navy of England had such disas- 
trous experience. Defeat such as was heaped upon her 



342 SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [i8i 2-1814 

during 18 12- 13 was a novelty. She declared the United 
States blockaded and scattered her ships from Eastport to 
New Orleans; Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Mary- 
land, and the District of Columbia were invaded. 

In 1812, our invasion of Canada was planned. One 
expedition, under Van Rensselaer, from Niagara should 
move against Queenstown and join a second from Detroit, 
under General Hull, against Toronto; a third, under Gen- 
eral Dearborn, should proceed over Lake Champlain, against 
Montreal, and all, victorious, were to unite against Quebec. 
But the plan proved difficult. Hull fled from Canada, 
fell back upon Detroit, and in a panic on the 15 th of 
August, surrendered it and the whole Northwest to the 
British. Van Rensselaer was defeated and hurried out of 
Canada. Dearborn just reached the boundary-line. Can- 
ada was safe. 

Perry had saved the day. Harrison, a soldier, suc- 
ceeded in 1 81 3, by the victory of the Thames River, in 
Canada, in permanently defeating the British and Indians 
and winning back the Northwest. 

In 1814, some of the "veterans of 1776" were retired. 
Winfield Scott, Jacob Brown, and Andrew Jackson came 
into command. Scott was victorious at Chippewa, Lundy's 
Lane, and Fort Erie (July 4th, 25th, August iSth). Com- 
modore McDonough, on Lake Champlain, in co-operation 
with a land force, was victorious at Plattsburg, Sep- 
tember I ith. 

In August a British fleet, under Admiral Cockburn, and 
a land force under General Ross, came up the Chesapeake. 
Five thousand soldiers marched without opposition from the 
Americans, save one pitiable attempt to stand at Bladens- 
burg, and captured Washington. The Capitol, the public 
buildings, and the White House were burned and pillaged. 
The archives of the nation were scattered to the winds. 
Then Ross quickly retreated to his ships and sailed away to 
attack Baltimore. But he bombarded Fort McHenry in 
vain. Ross was killed* and Cockburn, following General 

* General Ross was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, where his monu- 
ment commemorating the destruction of Washington may still be seen. 
The Americans had burned York, in Canada, in 1813. 



i8i4] PEACE 343 

Gage's example, sailed to Halifax. One of the episodes of 
the flight from Washington shows the heroism of the Presi- 
dent's wife, though the President himself showed little, 
Dolly Madison was determined that the Stuart portrait of 
Washington, hanging in the White House, should not fall 
into the hands of the British. She cut it from its frame, 
and escaped with it under her arm. It now hangs in one 
of the reception-rooms of the mansion. 

In April, 1814, Napoleon abdicated and was sent into 
exile at Elbe. Europe was at peace. England could con- 
centrate her fleets and her armies upon America. She 
planned another "Spanish Armada." A powerful fleet of 
fifty ships, armed with over one thousand guns, should sail 
from Jamaica, with over twenty thousand soldiers who had 
driven Napoleon into exile. This armament should swoop 
down upon New Orleans. 

Andrew Jackson, who for several years had been fight- 
ing Indians in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, was in 
command of the city. The British under General Paken- 
ham, a brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, landed 
in December, and on the 8th of January, 18 15, began the 
attack. Jackson had thrown up earthworks with here and 
there a cotton bale, and behind these the Americans awaited 
the attack. The defenses were rude; the defenders were 
rough frontiersmen, militia, and a few squads of free colored 
men. Twice the British attacked ; twice they fell back with 
fearful losses. Over half the English army was killed or 
wounded. The Americans lost only seventy-one. General 
Pakenham had been killed by a sharpshooter, a free negro. 
It was Bunker Hill, with victory for the Americans. Never 
before had the British army suffered such a defeat save 
under Braddock. 

The British, in February, took Mobile, but peace had 
already been signed at Ghent, on the 24th of December. 
A cablegram would have prevented the battle of New 
Orleans, as it might have prevented the whole war. The 
treaty, negotiated on our part by John Quincy Adams, 
Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, and James A. Bayard (of 
Delaware), went into details for the settlement of our boun- 
daries, for the cessation of Indian hostilities, and for the 



344 SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE [1815 1816 

abolition of the slave trade. Save as to the Indians, it 
said not a word about the causes of the war. But the 
"news from Ghent" was "good news," as Robert Brown- 
ing has told us. The war was over. Our victories at sea 
put an end to the impressment of our sailors. While Gen- 
eral Harrison had been subduing the Indians in the North- 
west, General Jackson had been subduing them in the 
region we now call Alabama and Mississippi. Never again, 
east of the Mississippi, did they give the settlers serious 
alarm. Though the treaty was silent about the American 
doctrine that "free ships make free goods," it practically 
implied that a nation that could maintain the doctrine 
would be suffered to practice it. 

In spite of the blunders of the war, the Americans had 
fought well. The war produced two popular heroes, the 
"Hero of the Tippecanoe," and the "Hero of New 
Orleans." Ovations befell them thick and fast. Every- 
body said that each would be President some day. 

Three results of far-reaching importance grew out of the 
war. American manufacturing began, and Congress was 
asked to pass laws to encourage and protect it. American 
goods, it was said, could compete with those of European 
make, if American manufactures were duly protected. A 
tariff for protection was the result. After 18 16 political 
parties divided on the tariff question. The rapid settle- 
ment of the West and the improvements in business and 
transportation disclosed the pressing need of a reliable cur- 
rency. Whether this should be supplied by a United States 
bank or by state banks was a question on which the coun- 
try divided. The charter of the old United States bank 
expired in 18 12, and Congress refused to renew it. The 
war of 1 8 12 was carried on by loans and treasury notes. 
No sooner was the war over, than a powerful movement 
set in to have the bank rechartered, or one like it estab- 
lished. In 1 8 16, a new bank, the Bank of the United 
States, was chartered. It was the subject of political con- 
troversy for the next twenty years, 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE POLITICAL INTERREGNUM 

1816-1828 

In November, 18 16, Monroe, Madison's Secretary of 
State, and Tompkins, lately governor of New York, were 
elected President and Vice-President, each receiving 183 
electoral votes. They had been nominated by the congres- 
sional caucus. The Federalist vote was cast for Rufus King 
(34 votes) for President, and was scattered among five men, 
of whom Chief Justice Marshall was most eminent, for 
Vice-President. Indiana, though not admitted till Decem- 
ber I ith, voted — the nineteenth state. Its legislature chose 
its presidential electors — the case in seven other states— as 
in 18 12. Both houses were Democratic by larger majori- 
ties than ever before. The Federalist party had carried 
only three states, and these were its last victory. From 
this time it disappears from politics. 

Two months after his inauguration, Monroe made a tour 
of the country, from Baltimore to Portland, through New 
Hampshire and Vermont, westward through Buffalo to 
Detroit, and return. It was a triumphal journey, filled 
with ovations. The war was over; the country was resum- 
ing its prosperity; politics were quiet. A national feeling 
was coming over the people. As TJie Boston Ccntinel 
happily said, it was the "era of good feeling," and the 
phrase, at once taken up by the country, is forever associ- 
ated with Monroe's two administrations. In truth, the 
secret was, the world for the first time in centuries was at 
peace. Napoleon was at St. Helena. 

But the era of good feeling cannot be said to have 
included the frontier; that is, the Florida and the Canadian 
borders. Though General Jackson had quieted the Creeks 
and Choctaws, by his expedition during the late war, and 
had compelled them to give up some of their lands, they 

345 



346 THE POLITICAL INTERREGNUM [1S17-1S19 

fully expected their ally, Great Britain, to win them back. 
So, in 1817, they could restrain themselves no longer, and 
fell upon the settlements. Florida was the refuge of 
pirates, runaway slaves, and desperadoes, as well as the 
home of the Seminoles and of a part of the Creeks. Jack- 
son, ignoring the fact that it was Spanish soil, marched into 
West Florida, subdued it, hanged two Englishmen as spies, 
and routed the Indians. It was a high-handed act, and 
done without the knowledge of the Secretary of War, Cal- 
houn, who wanted to discipline Jackson on account of it, 
but John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, took Jack- 
son's side and won over the President. This was the 
beginning of a controversy that ran on for thirty years and 
sharply divided the whole country long before it was over. 
Spain had a feeble hold on Florida, and the United States 
was sure to obtain it ere long. 

The treaty of Ghent was a preliminary to a settlement 
of our Canadian boundaries. In October, 18 18, the com- 
missioners of the two countries agreed on our northern 
boundary from the Lake of the Woods to the "Stony 
Mountains," as the Rockies were called, along the line of 
49° north latitude. In 18 17, a part of the eastern boun- 
dary of Maine had been defined, but not satisfactorily to 
either country. By the treaty of 18 18 both countries were 
to occupy Oregon for ten years. 

On Washington's birthday, 18 19, Spain sold the Flori- 
das to the United States for five million dollars, and thus 
happily aided in bringing this lawless part of the country 
into peace and order. The treaty carefully defined our 
western boundary as far as Oregon. We had claimed that 
the Louisiana purchase extended as far west as the Rio 
Grande. This would have given us Texas. By the treaty 
of 18 19, we gave up all claim to the province of Texas, 
and our Spanish boundary was carefully set down: from 
the Gulf of Mexico to the 32d degree of north latitude, 
thence northward to the Red River, thence westward to 
the 1 00th meridian, thence north to the Arkansas, and 
westward to its source "in the latitude 42° north, and 
thence by that parallel of latitude to the South Sea." 
There was no survey of the line, and part of it was not 



1818-1819] OREGON 347 

only vague, but false to nature. However, nobody knew 
this at the time. 

Four nations were now reaching for Oregon and the 
control of the Pacific coast. 

The American claim to Oregon was based on Captain 
Gray's discovery of the Columbia, in 1792; on the explo- 
ration of the country, by Lewis and Clark, 1805; on the 
settlement of the country, at Astoria, 181 i, and on the 
treaty of 18 18 — a joint occupation with England. 

The English claim to Oregon was based on Vancouver's 
voyage to the Columbia in 1792, a few days after Captain 
Gray discovered it; the partial occupation of the country 
by the Hudson Bay Company; the treaty of 18 18, and the 
joint occupation. The Spanish claim to the Pacific coast 
was based on early conquest and occupation,* various 
treaties with France, and the treaty of 18 19 with the United 
States. Spain did not claim Oregon. 

The Russian claim to the Pacific coast was based on the 
discovery of Alaska by Vitus Bering, in 1741, the occu- 
pation of that country by Russian traders and missionaries; 
the decree of the emperor of Russia in 1822, fixing its 
southern boundary at 51° north latitude, and the settle- 
ment of a Russian colony in California, which practically 
ignored the boundary of 51°. 

The United States contended that Oregon extended 
from the Rockies to the Pacific, and from 42° to 51°. It 
began to look as if Russia might push her claims to the 
Pacific coast, and possibly secure California. John Quincy 
Adams realized the gravity of the situation. He main- 
tained that we ought to possess Texas and all of Oregon; 
he went further; no European nation should plant a colony 
either in North or in South America. 

In 18 19, the people of Missouri Territory asked for ad- 
mission as a state, and submitted a constitution to Congress. 
It contained one provision excluding free personsof color from 
the state and another establishing slavery. The first provis- 
ion raised the question whether a new state could make such 
an exclusion under the Constitution of the United States. f 

♦See pp. 20-24. 

I Art. IV, Sec. 2, Clause I, 



34^ THE POLITICAL INTERREGNUM [1819-1820 

In New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New 
York, North Carolina, and Tennessee free negro men might 
become voters, and by the national Constitution the citizens 
of each state were entitled to all privileges and immunities 
of citizens in the several states. 

The second provision raised the question of extending 
slavery over the country west of the Mississippi. The coun- 
try to the east was divided by law into slave soil and free 
soil. The question was one now raised for the first time. 
Congress and public opinion were divided. For two years 
it was discussed in Congress. Maine was asking for admis- 
sion at the same time. Finally, three compromises were 
made: Missouri solemnly promised to consider the clause 
excluding free persons of color null and void. It was then 
to be admitted as a slave state by proclamation of the 
President. In the remainder of the United States, west of 
the Mississippi and north of 36° 30', slavery should be for- 
ever prohibited. 

These compromises were the work of Senator Thomas 
of Illinois and Henry Clay. President Monroe announced 
the admission of Missouri, August 10, 1821. It voted in 
the presidential election of 1820, but its vote was not 
counted. Happily for the country, the election did not 
depend on the vote of Missouri, or there might have been 
a civil war. 

In November, 1820, the President and Vice-President 
were re-elected. No candidates were named. For Mon- 
roe, 228 electoral votes were cast: all the votes save one, 
which was given to John Quincy Adams. Tompkins 
received 215. Four new states had been admitted : Missis- 
sippi, December 10, 1817; Illinois, December 3, 1818; 
Alabama, December 14, 18 19; Maine, March 15, 1820. 
Twenty-three states voted. In nine, presidential electors 
were chosen by the legislatures.* Congress was Demo- 
cratic. 

In 1820, a series of revolutions broke out in Spanish 
America, North and South. Spain lost all her possessions 
on the two continents. Her former provinces established 

♦Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, South Carolina, 
Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Indiana, 



1821-1824I THE MONROE DOCTRINE 349 

themselves as independent republics. She struggled to 
hold her colonies, and appealed to the powers of continental 
Europe for help. They organized the "Holy Alliance" 
in 18 1 5, after the fall of Napoleon, consisting of France, 
Austria, Prussia, and Russia. For three years they hesi- 
tated, then they asked England to join them in helping 
Spain beat down these new American republics and to 
regain her colonies. 

The prime minister of England, George Canning, and 
the English people generally, had no love for the "Holy 
Alliance" or any of its schemes. On the other hand, they 
cared little to see the new republics prosper. Canning at 
once suggested to our minister, Richard Rush, that the 
United States should take decided grounds against any 
intervention of the alliance in American afTairs. On receipt 
of this hint, Secretary Adams laid it before Monroe, with 
earnest approval. Monroe sent all the papers to Jefferson 
and Madison. Jefferson's reply was the whole case in a 
nutshell: "Our first and fundamental maxim should be, 
never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe; our 
second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis- 
Atlantic affairs. America, North and South, has a set of 
interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her 
own. She should therefore have a system of her own, 
separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is 
laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor 
should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom." 
He advised Monroe to identify the policy of the United 
States with the policy of representative government for 
America, North and South. Madison's views were like 
Jefferson's. Strengthened by the opinions of his friends 
and predecessors, Jefferson and Madison, and by the unani- 
mous opinion of his Cabinet, which coincided with his 
own, on the 2d of December, 1823, he announced his policy 
in his annual message to Congress. It has long been called 
the Monroe Doctrine, and was, essentially, as follows: 

The American continents are henceforth not to be con- 
sidered as subjects for future colonization by any European 
powers. This referred to the Pacific coast, and to Russia 
and England in particular, 



350 THE POLITICAL INTERREGNUM [1S24 

The United States would continue its original policy 
of neutrality, "but with the governments {\. e.. the new 
American republics) who have declared their independence 
and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on 
great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, 
we could not view any interposition for the purpose of 
oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their 
destiny, by any European power in any other light than as 
the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the 
United States." This referred to the Holy Alliance. The 
effect of the doctrine was immediate. 

On the 1 5th of December, 1824, Russia agreed to restrict 
her settlements to north of 54° 40'. The Alliance did not 
interfere in American affairs. Spain lost her colonies, and 
excepting Brazil. Canada, and Alaska, the Western Hemis- 
phere was under a republican form of government. 

The election of 1824 brought new men to the front, and 
showed that the country' was passing through a great change. 
Monroe belonged to Washington's time and the Revolution. 
His generation was passing away ; new ideas, the new West, 
and new leaders had arisen. The whole country was un- 
settled politically. The Federalist party was extinct. The 
Democratic Republicans were in factions. New parties 
were in process of formation. For sixteen years the secre- 
taries of state had succeeded to the presidency. Madison 
had succeeded Jefferson; Monroe had succeeded ^Ladison. 
Would Adams succeed Monroe? There were two popular 
candidates from the Southwest, Clay and Jackson. Many 
of the politicians favored William H. Crawford of Georgia, 
and he was nominated by the congressional caucus. But 
people were tired of such nominations, because, they said, 
they were made by the "political ring." Jackson. Adams, 
and Clay were nominated by state legislatures long before 
election day. 

In the election, November 2, 1824, twenty-four states 
voted. Sixteen chose their electors by popular vote, and 
for the first time the popular vote was recorded. The eight 
choosing bv legislature were Vermont, Connecticut, New 
York. Delaware. South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and 
Missouri. Of the electoral votes. Jackson received 99. 



iS-m] "BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION" 351 

Adams 84, Crawford 41. Clay ^/. Calhoun was generally 
supported for \lce- President, and received 1S2. Among 
those who received votes for Vice-President were Jackson, 
Van Buren, and Clay. Of the popular vote, Jackson 
received 155,872, Adams 105,321, Crawford -(4,282, and 
Clay 46,587. Thus there was no election of President, and 
the choice went to the House of Representatives, as it had 
gone in 1800. By the terms of the Constitution, the fourth 
candidate on the list was dropped. This was Clay, and he 
threw his influence to Adams, who was elected. Adams 
had already decided, if elected, to appoint Clay Secretary 
of State, and also to invite Crawford and Jackson to enter 
the Cabinet. No sooner was Clay's nomination as Secre- 
tary- made than Jackson cried, " Bargain and corruption"; 
and he and his followers kept up the cry with great success 
all his life. There was no truth in the charge,* but most 
Democrats believed it true. 

The legislature of Tennessee at once nominated Jackson 
for presidential candidate, in 1828, This was beginning the 
campaign early, but the country responded, and at once 
divided into Jackson men and Adams men. Adams tried 
to be a non-partisan President, and succeeded probably as 
far as it is possible. He had decided notions that the 
President should direct public affairs, but Congress was not 
in sympathy with him. He was a President without a 
party. He favored a national bank and internal improve- 
ments at national expense. But his four years as President 
were an impatient waiting by the Jackson men for a new 
election. 

Adams advocated a tariff for protection as well as for 
revenue. The revenue should build roads and canals, 
establish a national university, erect public buildings, and 
dredge rivers and harbors. Gradually the Adams men took 
the name National Republicans, and their opponents called 
themselves Jackson Democrats. In I\Iay, 1828, after six 
weeks" debate, and amidst fierce sectional divisions, a pro- 

* It is a common thing, and has been for many years, for a President 
to call his competitors, in his own party, into the Cabinet. Lincoln had 
Seward, Chase. Cameron, and Bates in his first Cabinet; Hayes had 
Sherman; Gartield and Harrison had Blaine. 



352 THE POLITICAL INTERREGNUM [1828 

tective tariff bill was passed. Its opponents called it "the 
tariff of abominations." It pleased New England and 
Pennsylvania, but was condemned throughout the cotton 
states. At many public meetings it was pronounced un- 
constitutional. The new law clearly showed that the United 
States consisted of two parts, the North, filling up with 
factories and favoring a protective tariff; the South, full of 
plantations, favoring a tariff for revenue only. This was 
a serious difference of opinion. 

A country must have revenue, and a tariff bill is a tax 
bill. It is always desirable that all sections of a country 
should agree how taxes shall be raised. Serious differences 
may lead to civil war. The difference of opinion was 
becoming serious in 1828. 

Election day was now fast approaching. Already the 
candidates were announced. Democratic state legislatures 
nominated Jackson and Calhoun ; National Republican 
legislatures nominated Adams and Richard Rush, and 
public meetings all over the country indorsed the nomina- 
tions. Much excitement prevailed. Let us take a glance 
at the people who were about to express their choice. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC 

1800-1830 

The children of Washington's time were now men and 
women in middle life, and few who had taken part in the 
Revolution were living-. Many old things had passed awaA 




354 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1800-1830 

Ohio, which was a territory in 1800, was now fourth. 
North CaroHna was still fifth. But Kentucky had moved 
up from number nine to number six; Tennessee from num- 
ber fourteen to number seven ; Massachusetts had fallen to 
number eight. The wonderful growth of Kentucky and 
Tennessee in the South, and of Ohio in the North, plainly 
showed where the balance of power was tending — to the 
Mississippi Valley. Each of these flourishing states had a 
great leader, popular with thousands in other states. Ohio 
had William Henry Harrison, Kentucky had Henry Clay, 
Tennessee had Andrew Jackson. New York had Martin 
Van Buren, perhaps less popular than either of the others, 
but recognized as a sagacious man and a skillful politician. 
His opponents called him "the Kinderhook Fox," from the 
place where he lived. 

It may be accepted as true, in the history of our coun- 
try, that states which are gaining rapidly in wealth and 
population, as were New York, Ohio, Kentucky, and Ten- 
nessee at this time, always have very able and influential 
men in public life. 

Instead of only nine cities of 8,000 people or more, as 
in 1800, there were now thirty-two, and the city population 
had increased from 131,000 to 865,000. But fifteen out 
of every sixteen persons of the population lived in the coun- 
try. New York was the largest city, with a population of 
nearly 203,000. Philadelphia and its suburbs had 130,000, 
Boston 61,000, Charleston, South Carolina, 30,000, Balti- 
more 80,000, New Orleans 46,000, Cincinnati 25,000, Pitts- 
burg 13,000, Louisville 11,000, Bufl"alo 9,000. 

The principal streets of large cities were now paved with 
cobblestones. At night oil lamps swinging from wooden 
posts at the corners flung their timid light, save when the 
moon shone. But no city of the time would now be con- 
sidered well lighted. 

Since 1800, two improvements had quite changed the 
habits and ideas of the people: canals and railroads. The 
thirty years were an era of "internal improvements," as 
they were called. From every important town radiated 
roads, usually bad ones, but sufficient to unite the country 
in a rude sort of industrial union. But the enthusiasm of 



1800-1830] CANALS, RAILROADS 355 

the new <^eneration was for canals and railroads. Over three 
thousand miles of canals were proudly laid down on the 
map as "finished or in progress." Some were finished, as 
the Erie Canal, from Albany to Buffalo, three hundred and 
sixty-three miles; the Ohio Canal, from Cleveland to Ports- 
mouth, on the Ohio River, three hundred and six miles; 
the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, from Washington to Pitts- 
burg, three hundred and forty-one miles. In all, twenty- 
nine canals were built or building. They connected Lake 
Erie with the Hudson and the Ohio; the Delaware with 
the interior rivers of New York and Pennsylvania, and the 
Delaware with Chesapeake Bay. Their purpose was to 
give an eastern outlet to the West and Southwest. The 
Erie Canal was opened in 1825. It became at once, and 
continues to be, a great artery of trade, ily means of it 
the produce of New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan was marketed in New York 
City, which was becoming the metropolis of the Union. 
Pennsylvania constructed a system of connecting canals and 
railroads from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, which ultimately 
cost over thirty-five million dollars. These competed with 
the Erie Canal.* 

In addition to canals, about fourteen hundred miles of 
railroad were "finished or in progress." The Baltimore and 
Ohio, from Baltimore to Pittsburg, was two hundred and 
fifty miles long; the Boston and Albany (when finished) 
would be two hundred miles. Some twenty-four lines were 
projected, varying in length from five and one-half miles to 
three hundred. But in 1830 none of the long lines were 
completed. 

Because of so much expectation of profit, cities and 
towns were laid out on a grand scale all over the country. 
Speculation raged everywhere. Everybody hoped to get 
rich by the rise in land. The "boom" penetrated all parts 
of the West. Wherever a canal or railroad was projected, 

*In 1829 the completed canals were the Chesapeake and Delaware; 
the Cumberland and Oxford (Maine); the Farminfrton, in Coiniecticut; 
the Oswego, from Lake Ontario to Syracuse (Salina), and the Delaware 
and Hudson. In 1830 there were thirteen hundred miles of canals com- 
pleted, eighteen hundred in course of construction, and four hundred 
more projected. 



356 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1800-1830 

these "mushroom" cities were laid out, and lots were 
offered for sale.* 

But the real reason for the growth of the thirty-two 
cities and the hundreds of prosperous towns was the increase 
of manufactures. 

In 1802, the manufacture of sheet-copper began in 
Massachusetts; that of sail-cloth, from cotton duck, began 
seven years later. Over one hundred and eighty paper- 
mills were in operation in 1810. They were located on 
streams, usually small ones, whose water was specially 
adapted to the paper business. Cotton goods were printed 
in Philadelphia on engraved cylinders. In 181 1, the manu- 
facture of chemicals began in Salem, Massachusetts. In 
1 8 12, Fall River, Massachusetts started its cotton-mills, 
and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, its rolling-mills. In 18 13, 
stereotyping was begun in New York City. In 18 14, car- 
riage factories started in New Haven, Connecticut, and in 
Albany, New York. At the time of the Missouri Com- 
promise, nearly fifty steamboats had been built and were 
in use on western rivers. Newark, New Jersey, began its 
manufacture of patent leather in 1822. Carpenters' and 
other mechanics' tools had been mostly imported from Eng- 
land. A firm in North Bennington, Vermont, began the 
manufacture of steel squares in 1820. The wine interests 
of Cincinnati were started three years later. 

The manufacture of gas from coal was successful in New 
York in 1827, and from that time cities began to be better 
lighted at night. Gas slowly supplanted sperm-oil. Ames- 
bury, Massachusetts, produced the first roll of flannel made 
by machinery in 1824. 

The manufacture of common white or yellow dishes, 
called queensware, was begun in Philadelphia in 1825. 
Earthen sewer-pipes and tiles for roofs and drainage were 
made in Baltimore, and axes, hatchets, chisels, and com- 
mon edge-tools were made at Hartford, Connecticut, for 
the first time in this country the same year. School slates 
came into use, being made at various points on the upper 

♦For some account of the effect of this wild speculation and its 
causes, see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, 
Vol. I, Chapter XI. 



1800-1830] MANUFACTURES 357 

Delaware River. Fire grates and furnaces, lined with fire- 
brick, came into general use in 1827. They were made 
chiefly in Baltimore. Until that time, hard coal was not 
sold in the market, except to the very few who had fire- 
grates imported from England. Work by lithography was 
done in Boston. The workmen were brought from Eng- 
land. 

Pittsburg began the manufacture of linens in 1828; 
New York started a varnish factory, and straw-paper was 
made for the first time at Meadville, Pennsylvania. In 
1829, figured muslin was, for the first time, made at Cen- 
tral Falls, Rhode Island ; the Lowell calico factories pro- 
duced goods that competed with French and English prints; 
cutlery, hitherto imported from Sheffield, England, was 
made at Worcester, Massachusetts; sewing-silk was made 
by machinery for the first time at Mansfield, Connecticut; 
machinery for the manufacture of brick was set up in New 
York City ; the importation of fire-bricks now ceased ; gal- 
vanized iron was invented by a New York physician named 
Revere. 

It is to be noticed that these manufactures were chiefly 
in the North, that many of them were original inventions, 
and that they include a great variety of articles in common 
use. The numerous factories were chiefly in the cities. 
They employed many people. Therefore cities grew rapidly. 

By our patent laws, inventors are protected and encour- 
aged to produce many new devices, designs, and improve- 
ments. Upward of four hundred patents were granted 
annually from 1825 to 1830, but the patent office was not 
organized, as we know it, till 1836. Manufactures were 
encouraged by the tariff laws of 18 16, 1824, and 1828. 
Henry Clay was the recognized leader of all tariff men. 
They supported what they called "the American system of 
labor. 

An enumeration of some of the manufactures begun 
during these thirty years suggests one group of interests; 
a like enumeration of newspapers and periodicals suggests 
another. Two hundred newspapers were published in 1 801 , 
and of these, seventeen were dailies. Newspapers were 
usually party organs. TJie Evening Post, New York, began 



358 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1S00-1S30 

in 1 80 1 as a Federalist paper, and The Natchez Gazette^ 
as a Republican, about the same time. The Richmond 
Enquirer started in 1804. St. Louis and Vincennes had 
their first paper in 1808. The Albany Argus was first issued 
in 1813, when The Daily Advertiser, the first successful 
Boston daily, also began. Kaskaskia published The Illi- 
nois Intelligencer, in 18 14, the first paper in the state. The 
first religious paper in America, The Recorder, was published 
in the same year at Chillicothe, Ohio. The Hartford Times 
first went to its subscribers in 18 17. Two years later the 
first paper devoted to agriculture, called The American 
Farmer, was published at Baltimore. The Neiv York 
Observer appeared in 1820, about the time when Arkansas 
had its first paper, called, as one would expect. The Arkan- 
sas Gazette. The New Orleans Prices Current, established 
in 1822, was the first strictly commercial paper in the South. 
The Boston Courier first came out in 1824. The first Sun- 
day paper, The Sunday Courier, was started in New York 
City in 1825, but soon failed for want of patronage. Cin- 
cinnati established its first paper. The Commercial Register, 
in 1826, and Rochester, The Daily Advertiser, about the 
same time. The Journal of Commerce began in New York 
the next year; also, The Morning Enquirer, in 1829, which 
became The New York World thirty-two years later. Thc 
Southern Agriculturist, published at Charleston in 1828, 
was the first paper of its kind south of Baltimore. The 
Ladies' Jllagazine (Boston, 1828) united with Godey's Ladies' 
Book (Philadelphia) in 1837. Portland, Maine, had its first 
daily. The Courier, in 1829. The year 1830 witnessed the 
founding of several papers. The Boston Transcript, The 
Washington Globe, and The Albany Evening Journal. 
The North American Review was founded in 18 15. 

Evitlently the American people, in 1830, with their 
newspapers, canals, and postal service, were able to learn 
the condition and the sentiments of any part of the coun- 
try. However, newspapers were expensive (from five dol- 
lars to ten dollars a year\ and the mass of people did not 
subscribe for them. Usually the postmaster got up a club 
among his townsmen, of his political faith. But in hun- 
dreds of towns, the only paper that came was the post- 



1800-1830] BOOKS AND AUTHORS 359 

master's, and he read the news aloud to his friends and 
patrons. 

The mass of people are usually late in reading books 
which at last attain enduring fame. Exciting books of 
crime and adventure were printed then, as now, in paper 
covers and sold freely over the country. Religious books, 
such as Pilgrim's Progress, Baxter's Saints' Everlasting 
Rest, and Allen's Alarm, were found side by side with the 
Bible in thousands of homes. Joel Barlow wrote The Co- 
lumbiad in 1 807, William Cullen Bryant wrote The Embargo 
in 1809, and published his first volume of poems in 1821. 
William Ellery Channing, one of the "famous boys" of 
Washington's time, published a volume of essays in 183O; 
Lydia Maria Childs, a story. The Rebels, in 1825 ; Richard 
Henry Dana, The Idle Man, in 1822, and poems in 1827. 
William Dunlap wrote several successful plays and biog- 
raphies; Ralph Waldo Emerson published his first book in 
1830, and the first American edition of P'^ranklin's Works 
appeared in 18 18. 

Charles E. A. Gayarre wrote his first History of Louisi- 
ana in 1 830; S. G. Goodrich, whom our grandfathers and 
grandmothers knew as "Peter Parley," wrote Tales about 
America, 1827; Fitz Greene Halleck published poems in 
1 8 19 and 1821. Alexander Hamilton's works were first 
collected in 1810, six years after his death. Nathaniel 
Hawthorne's first book, Fanshawe, appeared in 1828, a 
year later than the first by Oliver Wendell Holmes — Poet- 
ical Illustrations of the Athenaeum Gallery of Paintings. 
James Kent's famous Commentaries on American Law 
were issued in 1826- 1830. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
printed his first volume of poems in 1826, and wrote a 
French grammar in 1830. John Neal's Keep Cool (18 17) 
and eight other books published by 1830, of which Logan, 
Seventy-Six, Brother Jonathan, and Rachel Dyer were the 
principal, are now quite forgotten. Poems by Edgar Allan 
Poe and William Gilmore Simms appeared in 1827 and 1829. 

Lydia Huntley Sigourney's poems, issued in 181 5 and 
1827, were long popular. Noah Webster published his 
Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. N. P. Willis 
brought out his first book of short stories, called Sketches, 



360 IX THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1800-1S30 

in 1827, But the most famous books of this period, if we 
except Webster's Dictionar}-, were by two of the "famous 
boys" of 17S9, James Fenimore Cooper and Washington 
Irvint-f. The books of the period which have lived are: 
Irving's Sahnagundi, 1S08; his Knickerbocker's History 
of New York, one of the dehciously humorous books in our 
language. 1809; the delightful Sketch-Book, 1820; Brace- 
bridge Hall, 1822; Tales of a Traveller, 1824; the Life and 
Voyages of Columbus, 1828. and The Conquest of Gra- 
nada, 1829. Cooper put forth his wonderful novels with 
great rapidity: Precaution, in 1820; The Spy, 1S21; The 
Pioneers, 1S23; The Pilot, 1823; Lionel Lincoln, 1824; 
The Last of the Mohicans. 1826: The Prairie. 1S27; The 
Red Rover, 1828; The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish, 1829, and 
The Water Witch, 1830. In Hawkeye, the hero of the 
Leather Stocking tales, he created the most original char- 
acter in American literature. 

The familiar titles of Irving's and Cooper's books do 
not suggest a period so far away as 1800-1830. Plainly the 
countr)' then had a few great books by Amerian writers. 
The list would be ver}' long if it included the sermons, the 
medical books, the law books, and the school books of the 
time. 

New England continued its system of free schools. 
New York and Pennsylvania established many academies, 
and contained a large number of "pay" or "rate" schools. 
When Congress organized the states of Ohio. Indiana. Illi- 
nois, Alabama, and Mississippi, it generously set apart 
everv' sixteenth and e\ery thirty-sixth section as school 
lands, for the support of free common schools and a state 
university. The spirit of western people is well shown by 
a provision of the constitution of Indiana of 1816: "It 
shall be the duty of the general assembly, as soon as cir- 
cumstances will permit, to provide by law for a general 
system of education, ascending in a regular graduation 
from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition 
shall be gratis and equally open to all." But the lands had 
first to be surveyed and sold. Many people all over the 
country felt too poor to send their boys to school after 
they were ten or twelve years old — the girls might go a 



iSoo-iSo;] ROBERT FULTON 361 

3'ear or two longer; then the children must go to work 
in the field or at a trade, and help support the family and 
themselves. 

The colleges, over seventy in number, were better 
attended as time passed. Webster was a graduate of Dart- 
mouth, John Ouincy Adams of Harvard. John C. Calhoun 
of Yale. But nearly all men in political life were, like Clay 
and Benton and Jackson, "self-made and self-educated." 
No system of public schools as we know them was in 
existence down to 1S30. 

Passengers were transported by coach, canal, and steam- 
boat. Good bridges and safe roads were now quite com- 
mon. The western rivers were dotted with steamboats. 
The Ohio, from Pittsburg, was swarming with steamers, 
rafts, arks, and boats of various patterns. In 1807, steam 
navigation may be said to have begun. Robert Fulton, 
on the first day of August, ran the Clermont from New 
York to Albany, one hundred and fiftj- miles, against the 
current, in thirty-two hours. From this time, steamboat 
navigation gradually overspread the waters of the United 
States. Ferr}--boats between New York and Jersey City, 
and between Camden and Philadelphia began in 1S12. 

In spite of the reluctance of many members of Congress 
to appropriate money from the national treasurj- for the con- 
struction of turnpikes, public sentiment, growing out of the 
needs of the West, began to count as votes in Congress. 
Beginning with a small sum ^^$ 12, 000), derived from the sale 
of lands in Ohio, Congress made an appropriation, in 1S06, 
for the construction of a national tunipike from Cumber- 
land to Wheeling. All through this period, bills to make 
additional appropriations, or new ones for new roads, came 
up in Congress. Some passed. But Jefferson, Madison, 
and Monroe disapproved the principle, and vetoed most of 
them. Adams favored all kinds of internal improvements. 

The states were less divided on this question. The 
legislature of Illinois chartered scores of canal, railroad, and 
turnpike companies, and issued bonds for the construction 
of thousands of miles of road and hundreds of bridges. 
Other western and southwestern states did the same. The 
first canal opened for the transportation of both freight and 



362 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1800-1830 

passengers was the Middlesex, connecting the Concord 
River and Boston, in 1804. 

From 1800 to 1830, the states west of the original thir- 
teen gained 3,000,000 of people, nearly as many as the 
country contained when Washington was inaugurated. 
Of these, 1,000,000 was gained south of the Ohio, includ- 
ing Louisiana and Arkansas, and about 2,000,000 north of 
the Ohio, including Missouri. The old states north of 
Mason and Dixon's line gained about 1,600,000; those 
south, about 800,000. The "wilderness roads" had devel- 
oped into three great highways to the West. The north- 
ern ran along the line of the Erie Canal to Buffalo, thence 
by land or by water to Erie, Cleveland, and Detroit, each 
of which was a point from which immigrants went ofT into 
the surrounding country. 

The central route was along the line of the projected 
Pennsylvania Canal, Philadelphia to Pittsburg, thence 
down the Ohio to distributing points. The southern routes 
were a group of lines running from Virginia and states 
south over the mountains. Immigration was chiefly by 
water. Along the main highways, prosperous villages 
sprung up, like Rochester, Utica, and Buffalo, which were 
cities of nearly nine thousand people each in 1830. 

In 1828, Horatio Allen, an English engineer, ran the 
first train in America, on any railroad, on the Carbondale 
and Honcsdale railroad, in Pennsylvania. The Baltimore 
and Ohio was formally opened on the 4th of July of that 
year. The rails were of wood, laid on stone or wooden 
cross-ties. A strap of iron covered the top of the rail. 
This iron strap would occasionally break loose from the 
spikes and run up into the cars or wrap round the wheels. 

In 183c, the South Carolina railroad, connecting Charles- 
ton and Hamburg, went into operation, and carried both 
freight and passengers — the first so designed. Horatio 
Allen planned the road-bed. The locomotive, the first 
made in this country, was constructed by Peter Cooper, in 
New York. Thus it will be seen that the long mileage of 
railroad shown on some of the maps of this period Was 
"in progress" rather than "finished." 

The charter of the United States Bank expired in 181 1, 



1 800-1830] THE POST 363 

and Congress refused to renew it. Immediately state banks 
and private banks started up all over the country, and each 
issued paper currency. Money had no solid foundation in 
gold or silver capital, or wealth of any kind. It was diflfi- 
cult to know whether a bank bill was worthless or not. 
Many business men issued due-bills and scrip for conven- 
ience. The United States Bank issued no small change in 
paper money. As speculation raged more furiously, the 
numerous banks issued greater quantities of money. In 
1816, Congress chartered a national bank for twenty-one 
years, with the enormous capital of thirty-five million dol- 
lars. It was modeled on the old United States Bank. 
But an institution so powerful was bound to be interested 
in politics. The Democratic party accused it of favoring 
the National Republicans. Webster and Clay were recog- 
nized friends of the bank. Benton and Calhoun, who 
seldom agreed on anything, agreed in opposing the bank. 
They said it was unconstitutional ; but the Supreme Court 
decided to the contrary in 18 19. Money was scarce all 
over the country, interest high, wages low, and labor 
abundant. No established system of credit was practiced. 
Credit was a personal matter. 

With improvements in transportation, the postal service 
became better. The postmaster in the smaller towns was 
usually a storekeeper. Money was scarce, and people pre- 
paid their postage with eggs, butter, oats, potatoes, and 
corn. The postage varied with the distance. To send a 
letter as far as it may now be sent for two cents would have 
then cost a farmer a cow. Adhesive stamps and envelopes 
were not yet in use. It took two weeks to get a letter from 
Erie, Pennsylvania, to Washington. In 1823, highwaymen 
occasionally "held up" the stage on the road from Phila- 
delphia to Baltimore and rifled the mail-bags. 

The old-fashioned amusements were kept up, but pro- 
fessional actors had become an additional means of pleasure. 
The Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia has been open 
since 1807. The "Star-Spangled Banner" was first heard 
at the Holliday Street Theater, in Baltimore, in 18 14. 
Italian opera was first sung in the Park Theater in New 
York in 1825. Theater-going had become so common in 



364 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC (1800 1830 

1826 that the great EngHsh actor, Macready, came to 
America, playing first in New York, and later in other large 
cities. But the people were greatly divided about such 
amusements. Many thought them wrong. 

Floggings in public, imprisonment in the stocks, and 
the whipping-post were disappearing. Some criminals 
were hanged, many lynched, and a few put in solitary 
confinement for life. Pennsylvania had the most humane 
prison system, and it was adopted in Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois. New York put convicts to work at Auburn and 
Sing Sing. 

At Hartford, Connecticut, the first institution in the 
country for teaching the deaf and dumb opened on the 
17th of April, 1817, with seven pupils, and adjoining states 
later sent pupils to it till a similar institution could be 
erected for them at home. But this change was slowly 
realized. The first asylum for the blind was opened in Bos- 
ton in 1829. The asylum in Philadelphia was the second. 
Pupils were sent to it at public expense from Pennsylvania 
and Delaware. 

Drunkenness was the prevailing vice of the times. All 
classes of society were addicted to liquor. In 1824, a great 
temperance movement, starting in Boston, overspread the 
country. More than one thousand temperance societies 
were formed by 1830. This was the famed "Washing- 
tonian" temperance movement. In six years the importa- 
tion of liquors fell off from five million dollars to one million 
one hundred thousand dollars. From this time merchants 
gradually ceased keeping liquor in stock, and the liquor 
traffic went to hotels and saloons. 

Nearly all the men in America who became eminent 
from i860 to 1880 were born during this period. When 
President Madison, in 18 12, proclaimed England and the 
United States at war, a number of famous boys were among 
those who were told the news. Horace Greeley and Charles 
Sumner were a year old, and could not be expected to be 
interested. James Freeman Clarke was two years old ; 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham 
Lincoln were three; Jefferson Davis, Andrew Johnson, and 
Salmon P. Chase were four; Robert E. Lee, Henry W. 



1 800-1830] FAMOUS YOUNG FOLKS 365 

Longfellow, John G. Whittier, and Richard Ilildreth were 
five; N. P. Willis and W. G. Simms, six; C. A. Gayarr<5 
was seven ; Nathaniel Hawthorne, eight ; Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, nine; William H. Seward, eleven; Millard Fill- 
more and George Bancroft, twelve; W. H. Prescott was 
sixteen, and William Cullen Bryant, eighteen. 

Turning to the close of this period, let us take the year 
1829, when John Quincy Adams retired from the presi- 
dency. In that year Charles Dudley Warner was born; 
Theodore Winthrop was a year old; Lew Wallace and 
Charles Eliot Norton were two years old; Bayard Taylor 
was four; George William Curtis, five; Francis Parkman, 
six; Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Edward 
Everett Hale, and Donald G. Mitchell ("Ik Marvel"), 
seven; William T. Sherman, nine; Walt Whitman, ten; 
James L. Motley, fifteen; Henry Ward Beecher, sixteen; 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, seventeen. 

The first thirty years of the new century witnessed that 
counter-revolution which was bound to follow so profound 
a change as that wrought in America in 1776. All the 
personages who had been foremost in furthering that change 
were carried to their graves before 1830. New men suc- 
ceeded them, but could not take their places. The public 
duty had changed with the times, and lesser men could 
administer the republic, executing the policy which Wash- 
ington, as later modified by Jefferson, had laid down. 
Jefferson and Adams survived till 1826, though with incom- 
parable difference in influence. Jefferson continued a politi- 
cal force, while Adams was only an ex-President. The 
political ideas for which Adams stood were embodied in 
a greater than he, one whom Americans must ever name 
in reverence, and for whom they are indebted to Adams. 
John Marshall was appointed chief justice of the United 
States by Adams in February, 1801, and he served in his 
high office until July, 1835. Time has honored the Presi- 
dent's judgment, and has approved his confessed thought 
that "his gift of John Marshall to the people of the United 
States was the proudest act of his life." His first decision 
as chief justice was given in 1801 ; his last, in 1834. In 
all he gave some five hundred and twelve, of which forty- 



366 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1800-1830 

three were in cases involving an interpretation of the Con- 
stitution. A person who reads these decisions, and the 
Federalist, written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, in 
1787-88, while the Constitution was before the people of 
the states for ratification, has before him the authoritative 
and classic exposition of the Constitution of the United 
States. He may read later decisions and treatises for infor- 
mation, but he will return to Marshall and the Federalist 
for his conclusions and principles. 

Jefferson and Marshall are the great personages in 
America from 1800 to 1830. Madison is remembered for 
his Revolutionary services and for his contributions to the 
Federalist ; Monroe has given his name to a doctrine which 
he did not originate, but which may be traced to Madison, 
Jefferson, and Washington, in their presidential policy and 
utterances, and to Hamilton in the Federalist. Indeed, the 
promulgation of the doctrine is due as much to Monroe's 
astute Secretary of State and successor, John Quincy 
Adams, as to Monroe himself. 

The name of Adams recalls a great man, greater in 
Congress, in after years, than in the White House, where 
he lived a President without a party. The pathetic purity 
of his administration has given him a unique place in 
American history, but as President he was cabined, cribbed, 
confined; and the country, which then looked upon him 
merely as political heir to Monroe according to the pre- 
vailing law of succession — for both Madison and Monroe 
came, like Adams, to the presidency from the state depart- 
ment — learned later, when he was returned to the House 
of Representatives continuously for nearly twenty years, 
that, like Garrison, whom in faith, manner, and action he 
resembled, he would not equivocate, he would not retreat 
a single inch, and he would be heard. 

After the Missouri Compromise, 1820, came the era of 
new men, of whom the most interesting to the public were 
Benton and Clay in the West and Webster and Calhoun 
in the East, and they rapidly came to their own. 

The popular heroes of these thirty years were Jackson 
and Harrison, elevated by their admirers to a pinnacle of 
glory. Both attained the presidency, and in the race for 



1801-1830] GREAT PERSONAGES 367 

it both had run a highly dramatic military course. Both 
had driven back, defeated, and annihilated powerful savage 
tribes, and had extended the frontier far into the late 
Indian country. Both were men of the West — one of the 
South, the other of the North. 

If popularity is the test of greatness, one of these men 
was greater than Washington, for it may be doubted whether 
the first President attained the place in the hearts of his 
contemporaries which Jackson gained in the hearts of the 
Democrats, or even Harrison for a time held in the thoughts 
of the Whigs. Both Jackson and Harrison were hailed by 
their followers as reformers — as the Whigs said of Harrison 
when they nominated him for President, the first time in 
1836, "the man of high intellect, the stern patriot, uncon- 
taminated by the machinery of hackneyeS politicians — a 
man of the school of Washington." 

Harrison died so soon after entrance upon his high ofifice 
that the Whigs, bitterly disappointed, could scarcely restrain 
from mingling resentment with their tears, that fate had 
treated them so meanly. Jackson, like Jefferson, exercised 
vast political influence till his dying day, and bequeathed 
his system of practical politics to grateful heirs who added 
to their heritage and passed it on to posterity. 

Neither Webster nor Clay attained the popularity of 
Jackson, who in affability, learning, and intellectual grasp 
was their inferior. But in power to understand the plain 
people he surpassed both as distinctly as both excelled him 
and most other men in eloquence. In Jackson the people 
found a man whom they believed honest. They called him 
their own ; they trusted him perfectly, and he never 
deceived them. His war on the bank was their war; his 
distrust of Clay was their distrust, and cunning demagogues, 
quickly detecting the drift of public sentiment, utilized 
Jackson as a tool wherewith to shape their own ends. 

He stood for nothing new in statesmanship, but the 
event in his administration to which undoubtedly he would 
have attached greatest importance, had he been able to 
measure it by its consequences, was his appointment of 
Roger B. Taney, as Marshall's successor in the Supreme 
Court, and the appointment of so many associate justices 



368 IN THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC [1800-1830 

that the court was practically reorganized and made a 
Democratic organ. 

The stronghold of the Federalists was at last taken by 
their opponents, and it was destined to be held by them for 
twenty-eight years. 

West of the Alleghanies, people considered the old class 
distinctions which long prevailed in the East unsuited to 
a country like ours. The West was aggressive. The whole 
population was stirring with land speculations; new manu- 
factories, new canals, new railroads, new turnpikes. The 
hero of the West was Andrew Jackson. Had he not risen 
from poverty to be a great general? Had he not been 
"counted out" of the presidency? Certainly. The city of 
Washington was full of corruption, and it was high time 
that the people took possession of their government again. 

At last, in 1828, the November day came when the 
Jackson men could vote again. For Jackson and Calhoun 
647,231 votes were cast; for John Quincy Adams and 
Richard Rush, 509,097. Of the electoral vote, Jackson 
received 178, Calhoun 171, Adams and Rush 83. Only 
three states (New York, Delaware, and South Carolina) 
chose their electors by their legislatures. This showed how 
democratic the country had become. The party voting 
for Adams now called its members Whigs. It was in the 
minority in both houses. Andrew Jackson, was a typical 
American of his day. He had received more votes than 
were ever before cast for anybody in America. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

IN THE DAYS OF JACKSON AND VAN BUREN 
1829-1840 

At last "a. man of the people," as his supporters called 
him, was made President, and inaugurated March 4, 1829. 
He brought an army of other men of the people with him 
who took the offices that "the well-born" had so long held. 
Two thousand office-holders were turned out for what 
would now be termed "offensive partisanship," and their 
places filled by the President's supporters. This was the 
beginning of "the spoils system," which continued nearly 
seventy years, and which is not yet abolished. Many of 
Jackson's appointments were highly capable men. It was 
the Whigs who complained. No party stood for an efficient 
civil service. From 1829 our country was guided by a new 
policy. 

The tariff of 1828 divided the country into unfriendly 
sections. The South pronounced it unconstitutional, and 
with this idea some in the North agreed. But the majority 
of voters in the North believed in a tariff for protection and 
revenue, and not one for revenue only. A high protective 
tariff displeased the South, because its people manufactured 
almost nothing and imported much. They also exported 
nearly three-fifths of all the exports of the country. The 
South wanted a low tariff, for revenue only; the North a 
high tariff, for both revenue and protection. 

During the winter of 1830, a bill regulating the sale of 
public lands, known, from its author, as the " Foote Reso- 
lution," was under discussion. Senator Hayne, of South 
Carolina, on January 21, 1830, in a speech scarcely excelled 
in the annals of Congress, entered upon a masterly expo- 
sition of "State Sovereignty," the "Doctrine of 1798," 
nullification and secession. On the 26th, Webster made 
his famous speech, known as the "Reply to Hayne," now 

369 



370 DAYS OF JACKSON AND VAN BUREN [1831 

considered the greatest ever delivered in Congress. It con- 
cluded with the famous declaration: "Liberty and Union, 
now and forever; one and inseparable." 

The Constitution requires that all taxes levied by Con- 
gress shall be uniform throughout the United States. The 
South insisted that the tariff of 1828 violated this provision. 
In the Senate, the leader of the South was John C. Cal- 
houn. He had resigned the vice-presidency in order to 
re-enter the Senate to defend his ideas. His colleague, 
Robert Y. Hayne, warmly and ably supported him. In 
1 83 1, Calhoun in a powerful speech set forth the case of 
the South. He declared a tariff for protection unconstitu- 
tional and a violation of the rights of the states. In 1832, 
the tariff of 1828 was amended, and some duties taken ofi 
or reduced. But the principle of a tariff was not abandoned. 
Largely influenced by Calhoun, the legislature of South 
Carolina called a convention to consider the question of a 
tariff. It met at Columbia, and on the 24th of November 
passed an ordinance of nullificationvvhich declared the tariff 
laws of 1828 and 1832 "null and void"; forbade any citi- 
zen of South Carolina to pay the duties after February i, 
1833, and even made compliance with the laws an offense. 

The summer of 1832 was full of excitement. What 
would Jackson do with South Carolina? The presidential 
election occurred in November. Jackson was the only per- 
son thought of by his party to succeed himself. He sug- 
gested that a convention be called to nominate a candidate 
for Vice-President. It met in Baltimore, March 22, 1832; 
was the first Democratic national convention, and nomi- 
nated Martin Van Buren. The National Republicans (or 
Whigs) had met in convention, in the same city, December 
12, 1831, and nominated Henry Clay for President and John 
Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. This was 
the first national convention of the party. 

It was not, however, the first national convention. 
The first had met in Baltimore, September 26, 1831, and 
had nominated William Wirt, of Maryland, and Amos Ell- 
maker, of Pennsylvania, as the anti- Masonic candidates. 
Jackson received 219 electoral votes. Van Buren 189, Clay 
and Sergeant 49, Wirt and Ellmaker 7 each. The popular 



1832] JACKSON'S PROCLAMATION 371 

vote stood 687,502 for Jackson and 530,189 for Clay. 
South Carolina was the only state that chose presidential 
electors by its legislature. The re-election of Jackson by 
so large a vote showed the confidence of the country in him. 

On the 6th of December, 1832, the President issued a 
proclamation to the people of the United States, in which 
he reviewed the whole case of South Carolina. The review 
was masterly, and the proclamation ranks among the great 
state papers of America. Said Jackson: "I consider, then, 
the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by 
one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, 
contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, 
unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle 
on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object 
for which it was formed." He concluded his proclamation 
with an affectionate appeal to the people of South Carolina, 
whom he addressed as "fellow-citizens of my native state, " 
that they rescind their nullification act, support the govern- 
ment, and preserve the Union. 

In compliance with the President's wishes, Congress on 
the 1st of March, 1833, passed a "force bill" authorizing 
him to use troops to enforce the collection of customs in 
South Carolina. Almost at the same time (March 2) it 
passed Clay's compromise bill, providing for the gradual 
reduction of the duties. During the progress of these bills, 
Calhoun delivered a great speech defending nullification 
and the right of a state to withdraw from the Union. 
Webster replied, in one of his powerful speeches, denying 
the existence of such rights. But Clay, by his compromise, 
had pulled the dragon's teeth. South Carolina met on 
March 11, and repealed its ordinance. Jackson was 
hailed as the savior of the Union. The Whigs thought 
Henry Claj' had again saved the country by a compromise 
as he had saved it in 1820. 

The West opposed the bank, because it maintained a 
monopoly of the business of the country. The new states 
wanted banks of their own. Jackson opposed the bank for 
many reasons, of which not the least was because the Whigs 
supported it. Another was because he believed it to be 
unconstitutional. He was not satisfied with the decision 



372 DAYS OF JACKSON AND VAN BUREN [1833 

of the Supreme Court sustaining the bank. He said Mar- 
shall and the court were wrong. Lest there be any doubt 
of his feelings, he suddenly announced, in his first message 
to Congress, in 1829, that he wholly disapproved of the 
bank, and that its charter ought not to be renewed. This 
was a declaration of war on the bank, for its charter had 
yet eight years to run. But the President was resolved to 
crush the bank, and have his supporters to understand that 
no one who favored it could expect favors from him. 
Every Jackson man understood that the Democratic party 
was now opposed to the bank. Opposition to it was, as we 
would now say, "a plank in the party's platform." Jack- 
son construed his re-election as proof that the people wished 
the bank destroyed. 

The Whig, or National Republican, platform advocated 
a different policy. Clay and Sergeant stood for "an ade- 
quate protection to American industry"; that is, a protect- 
ive tariff; "a uniform system of internal improvements, 
maintained and supported by the general government." 
They maintained that "the doctrine . . . that 'to the 
victors belong the spoils of the vanquished' is detrimental 
to the interests, corruptive to the morals, and dangerous 
to the liberties of the country." 

Convinced that the people had repudiated the Whig 
platform, Jackson renewed his warfareon the bank. He in- 
structed the Secretary of Treasury, William J. Duane, in 1833, 
to remove the public money from it, place it in designated 
state banks, and no longer deposit in the national bank. 
Duane refused to obey or to resign. Jackson declared the 
secretaryship vacant, and appointed Roger B. Taney (then 
Attorney-General) Secretary, and he obeyed. The Whigs 
at once nicknamed the chosen state banks "pet banks."* 
But the President's course was a severe blow to the bank. 

* They were the Girard, of Philadelphia; the Manhattan, Mechanics', 
and Bank of America, of New York; the Commonwealth and Merchants', 
of Boston; the Maine, of Portland; the Commercial, of Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire; the Burlington, of \'ermont; the Farmers' and 
Mechanics', of Hartford, Connecticut; the Union, of Baltimore; the 
Metropolis, of Washington; the \'irginia, of Richmond; the Union and 
Commercial, of New Orleans; the Alabama, of Mobile; the Planters', of 
Natchez, Mississippi; the Union, of Nashville, Tennessee, and the Frank- 
lin, of Cincinnati 



ippi; 
i. Oh 



1834] SPECULATION 373 

At once the Senate responded by a vote of censure, 
passed through Clay's influence, on March 28, 1834. It 
declared that the President had assumed powers not con- 
ferred on him by the Constitution. Jackson, whose temper 
was not under as good control as Washington's, exclaimed, 
on reading it: "Oh, if I live to get these robes of office 
off me, I will bring this rascal Harry Clay to a dear 
account." But the Whigs approved Clay's course. No 
sooner was the resolution of censure passed, than Benton 
gave notice that he should move that it be "expunged from 
the journal." For three years he persisted, till, near mid- 
night of the i6th of January, 1837, the Senate passed the 
expunging resolution. The Secretary turned back the 
pages of the journal to the resolution of censure; he drew 
around it a broad, black line, and wrote across its face, 
"Expunged by order of the Senate." Jackson gave a 
dinner at the White House to all who had "stood by him 
in the long struggle." The Whigs said it was a violation 
of the Constitution to cross out any part of the official 
record of Congress. 

The country was prosperous, and there raged specula- 
tions in lands lying along the countless lines of "projected" 
railways, canals, and turnpikes. This had been going on and 
increasing since 1825. Whole counties in the West were 
laid out in town lots and offered for sale in the East. So 
active was business, so vigorous the new West, so irresisti- 
ble the flood-tide of immigration, a ten dollar lot to-day might 
sell for a hundred in three months. This was nothing less 
than land-gambling. Everybody who could loan a dollar was 
besieged by borrowers. The banks had more paper out than 
they could carry. Credit was as common as speculation. 

The effect of speculation in land increased its sales. 
But most of the pay offered was state bank currency. 
What would the government do with this mass of paper? 
Land sales had increased from $2,300,000 in 1831 to 
$24,800,000 in 1836. If the government accepted state 
currency, it must hold it at par or lose millions of dollars. 
Moreover, the government had nothing to do, and wanted 
nothing to do, with these banks. The President meanwhile 
decided on a remedy. 



374 DAYS OF JACKSON AND VAN BUREN [1836-1837 

On the I ith of July, 1836, he issued an order, through 
the Secretary of Treasury, which was at once given the 
name of the "Specie Circular." Hereafter land would be 
sold only for gold or silver, or land script. The effect was 
immediate. The western banks at once called on the east- 
ern for specie — at a high rate of interest, to be sure — and 
the eastern banks took from their specie reserve to make 
the loan. This, of course, endangered the value of all paper 
money based on the reserve. 

In 1836, the nation was out of debt, and there was a 
surplus in the treasury. Congress passed a law distributing 
among the states all the surplus over five million dollars. 
Specie payments to the states were made in 1837 — then 
payments suddenly ceased. The government had voted 
away thirty-seven million four hundred thousand dollars, 
but before the gift had left its hands, the Treasurer was 
without funds to meet the daily expenses of the govern- 
ment. The panic of 1837 had begun. 

The pet banks held most of the government's money, 
which they had used in business. Much of it was loaned 
to merchants, lumbermen, milling companies, improvement 
companies of various kinds, and to individuals. Most of 
these borrowers were engaged in legitimate business, and 
were the "sound business men" of the community. When 
Congress voted to divide the surplus among the states, 
nearly forty million dollars were suddenly demanded of the 
banks. They in turn demanded of their patrons who had 
borrowed from them. These in turn fell back upon their 
debtors, large and small. Speculation had led to the abuse 
of credit. Nobody had ready money, and nearly everybody 
was in debt. 

The panic had been under way three months when the 
presidential election was held. Jackson declined a third 
term, but indicated Van Buren as his successor. The 
Democratic national convention, held in Baltimore in May, 
1836, carried out his wishes, and also nominated Richard M. 
Johnson, of Kentucky, for Vice-President. No platform 
was adopted. It was known that Van Buren would con- 
tinue Jackson's policy. The Whigs held several state con- 
ventions, but no national convention. Three Whig tickets 



1837] VAN BUREN 375 

were nominated: for President, William Henry Harrison, 
Daniel Webster, and W. P. Mangum (of North Carolina); 
for Vice-President, John Tyler, of Virginia; Francis Gran- 
ger, of New York, and John McLean, of Ohio. Since the 
last election of a President, two states had been admitted: 
Arkansas, a slave state, June 15, 1836, and Michigan, a free 
state, which voted now, though it was not formally admitted 
till January, 1837, Of the popular vote, Van Buren received 
761,549, Harrison 736,656. South Carolina continued to 
choose presidential electors by its legislature. 

Of the electoral votes. Van Buren received 170, Johnson 
147, Harrison 'jt^, Webster 14, Granger yy, Tyler 47. The 
close popular vote showed that the country was quite evenly 
divided on Jackson's policy. The Democrats retained the 
Senate, but the House was Whig. On his retirement, 
Jackson issued a farewell address, in imitation of Washing- 
ton. He had ruled with a firm hand. He had sustained 
the Union at a critical time. His return to his home, the 
Hermitage, near Nashville, was a long ovation. He was 
the only President who closed his term a more popular man 
than when he began it. During the remaining eight years 
of his life he devoted himself to his plantation, and was 
counselor of those he left the leaders of his party. 

President Van Buren's term was a trying one. All 
through it people suffered from "hard times." Some 
blamed him, others blamed the specie circular. Others said 
that the real cause of public misery was the donation of the 
surplus revenue to the states. The President called Con- 
gress in extra session to devise some remedy for the panic, 
which, before midsummer, had swept over the country and 
reduced thousands to poverty — such poverty that to this 
day it is spoken of by old people as ''tlie panic." Con- 
gress had an empty treasury to fill. It proceeded to fill 
part of it by issue of treasury notes, which, to the amount 
of ten million dollars, began another national debt. Van 
Buren was a good financier. He was the wealthiest of our 
Presidents, and had become rich by prudent management. 
He believed that the government should handle its own 
funds, receiving its revenue, and paying its creditors through 
its own agencies, but his party was- still devoted to state 



376 DAYS OF JACKSON AND VAN BUREN [1838-1840 

banks. Finally, in 1840, the sub-treasury, or independent 
treasury, now used, and which he first recommended, was 
adopted, though it was not firmly established till 1846, 
having been repealed meanwhile by the Whigs. 

The Whigs impatiently waited these four years for 
another election, as the Democrats had waited when John 
Quincy Adams was chosen. In 1838, at Warsaw, and in 
1840, at Albany, there assembled a new party in conven- 
tion, which called itself the Liberal party, and its creed was 
the abolition of slavery. It nominated James G. Birney, 
of New York, and Francis Lemoyne, of Pennsylvania. 
The Whigs met in national convention at Harrisburg in 
December, 1839, ^^^ nominated Harrison and Tyler. The 
Democrats met at Baltimore in May, 1840, and renomi- 
nated Van Buren, but could not agree on a Vice-President. 
It adopted a platform of which these were the provisions: 

The powers of the United States government should be 
strictly construed. Internal improvements at national 
expense are unconstitutional. A tariff for necessary 
revenue; none for protection. The government must be 
economically administered. A United States bank is 
unconstitutional. Congress has no power, under the Con- 
stitution, to interfere with slavery or control it; it is a 
domestic institution wholly under the control of the states. 
The party would support the independent treasury scheme. 

Until 1840, presidential elections had been managed by 
the congressional caucus, by state legislatures, or of late 
years by the nominating convention, but in this campaign 
the people took the election into their own hands. The 
condition of the country had greatly changed since the day» 
Jackson was first chosen. Turnpikes, canals, railroads, 
enabled the people to get together as never before. The 
long-continued depression of business had caused the 
familiar cry, "Anything for a change." The campaign, 
as we know a campaign, began — mass-meetings, open-air 
speeches, almost endless torch-light processions, barbecues, 
songs, caricatures, and ten thousand devices to give effect. 
In every Whig meeting and procession, the log cabin and 
the coon were conspicuous. General Harrison had spent 
most of his life on the frontier, fighting Indians or making 



i84o] "TIPPECANOE AND TYLER TOO" 377 

treaties with them for their lands. His opponents repre- 
sented him as a rough, ignorant man, dressed in the garb 
of a frontiersman, with coon-skin cap, or as a western set- 
tler, sitting in his log cabin, "drinking hard cider and 
skinning coons." Then the West took up Harrison, 
accepted the log cabin and the coon as a badge of political 
faith, and went into the campaign. And such a campaign! 
Men talk about it yet. IMonster meetings, to be addressed 
by a score of speakers, were arranged all over the North. 
A paper of the day claims that one hundred thousand people 
assembled at Dayton, Ohio, to greet Harrison. A refrain 
of one of the log-cabin songs, "Tippecanoe and Tyler 
too," has come down to our time with no uncertain ring, 
and has passed into common speech. Such an uprising had 
never before been known in this country. 

At last the 3d of November was over. Harrison had 
received 1,275,059 votes, Van Buren 1,128,700, Birney 
7,059. In spite of the noisy campaign, Harrison's popular 
majority was not phenomenal. But in the electoral college 
he and Tyler had received 234 votes to 60 for Vaii Buren 
and 48 for Johnson. Both branches of Congress were Whig. 
For the first time in forty years the Democrats were routed 
at the polls in a national election. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE ASPIRATION OF THE WHIGS 
1840-1848 

Though Harrison was President, Clay was the recognized 
leader of the Whigs, and he now came forward with several 
"Whig reforms" which he expected to carry through 
Congress. 

The independent treasury law should be repealed ; a 
national bank established ; a temporary loan be made to 
meet pressing obligations of the government; a tariff law 
with higher duties passed, and the proceeds of public land 
sales be distributed among the states. 

Harrison approved the program, but suddenly, just a 
month after his inauguration, he died, and John Tyler, who, 
though elected by the Whigs, was not a Whig, succeeded 
at the presidency. Death had ruined the Whig program. 

Clay went on with his program. The independent 
treasury law was repealed, and the bill was signed by the 
President, but he would do no more, and he faced the 
party with veto after veto. Clay was defeated "in the 
house of his friends." So the Whig leaders met and 
declared political war against Tyler, who boldly accepted 
the challenge. His Cabinet, save one member, resigned, 
but he summoned a new one, not composed of Whigs. 
The proposed Whig reforms passed, much modified from 
Clay's original plan. 

At this time a treaty with Great Britain was pending, 
and Webster, the Secretary of State, remained in the Cabi- 
net to complete it. On the 9th of August, 1842, it was 
signed, in Washington, by Lord Ashburton for England, 
and Webster for the United States. Webster then 
resigned. The treaty defined the boundary from the River 
St. Croix to the St. Lawrence; from the western point of 
Lake Huron to the Lake of the Woods, and imperfectly 

378 



1818-1844] TEXAS, OREGON 379 

from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, It 
also provided for mutual action of the two governments to 
suppresss the slave trade. 

Meanwhile, Texas had become an independent republic, 
in 1836. Many Americans had migrated to the new coun- 
try, and at once began maneuvering for its annexation to 
the United States, but many northern members of Congress 
took alarm, for eight or ten slave states might be made out 
of Texas. Though as yet there was no controlling anti- 
slavery sentiment in the North, a conviction had been 
growing there for twenty years that the slave-holding area 
ought not to be increased, and that the territories should 
be kept free soil. 

Van Buren had declined to hold any negotiations what- 
ever leading to annexation, but Tyler, a defender of slav- 
ery, opened negotiations in secret. This much, and this 
only, was known. Finally, Tyler negotiated a Texas treaty 
and sent it to the Senate in April, 1844. It was rejected 
by a vote of more than two to one. But the President had 
gained his point. He knew that thousands favored annex- 
ation. Rejection of his treaty made the question an issue 
in the presidential campaign of 1844, Texas had asked for 
admission into the Union. What answer would the Ameri- 
can people make? Important events had also raised another 
issue: the ownership and boundaries of Oregon. Russia 
had agreed to come no farther south than 54° 40', and 
England and the United States in 18 18 had agreed to a 
joint occupation of the country for ten years, but in 1827 
they agreed to continue it till either party should give a 
year's notice that the joint occupancy should end. The 
fur companies, English and American, were competing 
within its borders. A young missionary, Marcus Whitman 
by name, sent out by the Methodist board of missions, 
reached the Columbia in 1835. He returned, asked for 
support, and a year later went back with his wife and 
another missionary. The way was opened, and immigrants 
soon followed. Their route was from Westport, Missouri, 
across the plains, through the passes, and down the streams 
to the coast. By 1840, nearly one hundred and fifty had 
arrived in Oregon. To counterbalance this American 



3So THE ASPIRATION OF THE WHIGS [1842-1844 

influence, the Hudson Bay Company quickly brought in 
Canadian immigrants. England and the United States 
were contesting for Oregon by sending people to inhabit it. 

In 1842, Whitman made a marvelous journey to Wash- 
ington to tell the news that the English were taking Ore- 
gon. Five months had he been on the way, facing perils 
from wintry weather, from savage beasts and from more 
savage men, but he found neither President nor Congress 
much interested in Oregon. As the story of his wonderful 
ride of three thousand miles in midwinter spread over the 
country, the people took up his cause. "Let us go to 
Oregon," was the cry. In June, 1843, Whitman was again 
at Westport, with his face toward Oregon, and a thousand 
people were following his lead. Six thousand more came 
during the next two years. By this time the presidential 
campaign of 1844 was in full swing, and people were shout- 
ing, "Oregon, the whole or none!" "Fifty-four-forty, or 
fight ! " " Reannex Texas ! ' ' 

The new issues puzzled some of the presidential candi- 
dates. In August, 1843, at Buffalo, New York, the Lib- 
erty party met in convention and nominated James G. 
Birney, of Michigan, and Thomas Morris, of Ohio. Their 
platform was long. In substance, it declared that slavery 
rested on state authority ; that within the territory exclus- 
ively controlled by the United States it ought to be abol- 
ished, and that the fugitive slave act ought to be repealed. 

The Democrats held their convention at Baltimore, in 
May, 1844, nominated James K. Polk, of Tennessee, the 
speaker of the House, for President, and George M. Dallas, 
of Pennsylvania. Their platform demanded the repeal of 
the late Whig law distributing the public money arising 
from land sales among the states, the reoccupation of Ore- 
gon, and the reannexation of Texas. 

At the Whig convention, held in Baltimore, also in May, 
Clay was nominated for President and Theodore Freling- 
huysen, of New Jersey, for Vice-President. Their platform 
called for a tariff for revenue and protection, for the distri- 
bution of the public land revenue, and for a single term for 
the presidency. 

Polk came out decidedly for the "reannexation" of 



1845-1846] TEXAS, OREGON 381 

Texas and the "reoccupation" of Oregon. Clay was eva- 
sive. The Whigs were on the defensive ; the Democrats 
went before the country with an aggressive policy. 

The campaign was almost as spectacular as that recently 
for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Tyler had been renomi- 
nated by a little gathering of his admirers, but he retired 
in favor of Polk. When the votes were counted, 1,337,243 
were for Polk and Dallas; 1,299,068 for Clay and Freling- 
huysen ; 62,300 for Birney and Morris. Of the electoral 
vote, the Democratic candidates received 170; the Whig 
candidates 105. Both houses of Congress had a Demo- 
cratic majority. 

Tyler did not wait for Polk to add Texas to the Union. 
The people had spoken: "Let Texas come in." And 
Tyler urged immediate action. Congress responded by a 
joint resolution for annexation. After some amendment, 
it passed March i, 1845. The resolution provided that the 
boundaries of Texas should be left to the decision of Con- 
gress, and that four new states might be formed out of 
Texas, with its consent. In such states lying south of 36° 
30' slavery should exist, "as the people of each state may 
desire"; in such lying north of this Missouri Compromise 
line, slavery should be prohibited. On the 29th of Decem- 
ber, Texas was proclaimed a state of the Union by Presi- 
dent Polk. Mexico had lost Texas in 1836. Its boundaries 
were still in dispute. 

In Oregon, the President and Congress showed less inter- 
est. England was not Mexico, and could not be treated 
quite so brusquely. The claim to 54° 40' was resisted by 
Great Britain. To admit it, left Russia, the United States, 
and Spain in possession of the Pacific coast. Canada would 
be cut off. But notice to England that the joint occupation 
should terminate was given by the President in June, 1846, 
and a treaty was signed in August. The boundary of the 
Northwest was established from the Rocky Mountains to 
the middle of the channel of Fuca's Strait, and thence 
to the Pacific. Oregon was at last peacefully ours. 

But Texas was ours with war. Mexico claimed that the 
Nueces River was her eastern boundary; Texas claimed 
that the true boundary was along the Rio Grande. Here 



3S2 THE ASPIRATION OF THE WHIGS [1846-1847 

was a disputed territory larger than three states as great as 
New York. By the resolution admitting Texas, her boun- 
daries were to be determined by Congress. The President, 
supported, as he knew he would be, by Congress, promptly 
claimed this disputed territory. This carried our western 
boundary midway along the Rio Grande from its mouth to 
its source, and thence to the42d parallel. As commander- 
in-chief of the army, the President ordered General Zachary 
Taylor, one of the "famous boys" of Washington's time, 
to march at once and occupy the disputed territory. With 
equal promptness, the Mexican army crossed the Rio 
Grande, April 24, 1846, and attacked Taylor. He sent the 
news to the Secretary of War. From Washington it went 
all over the country; "American soil invaded! General 
Taylor attacked by the Mexicans!" "American blood 
shed on American soil!" 

There were thousands of Americans, chiefly Whigs, 
who believed that the disputed territory was Mexi- 
can soil; they had opposed "reannexation" from the start. 
The President, by a special message to Congress, May 11, 
declared: "... We have tried every effort at reconcilia- 
tion. The cup of forbearance has been exhausted. . . . 
Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has 
invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon 
American soil." And that, "War exists ... by the act 
of Mexico herself." "Energetic and prompt measures" 
were recommended. 

Whigs, who opposed the whole Texas acquisition, boldly 
questioned the truth of the President's statements. But 
not all Whigs were in opposition. Congress declared war 
on the 13th, and the call of the President went out for fifty 
thousand volunteers. On the very day war was declared, 
news was on the way to Washington that Palo Alto and 
Resaca de la Palma had been fought and won, and Mata- 
moras taken by our troops. Monterey fell into their hands 
September 24; General Santa Anna was repulsed at Buena 
Vista, February 23, 1847. 

Santa Anna expected to destroy Taylor's army at Buena 
Vista, for he knew that General Winfield Scott had arrived 
at the mouth of the Rio Grande, had assumed the chief 



1847] r.wi.oR AM) sciur 3S3 

coiiiinaiid. had ordered ra\'lor to send liini ten tlunisaiul 
men. Awd probably had so weakened Taylor as to make 
his defeat easy. A less resolute soldier than Taylor niii;ht 
have been defeated. In the thiekest of the flight a sum- 
mons to surrendei' reaehed TaxMor. "Cieneral l.udor never 
surrenders."' wms the replw The eountry took it up, anil 
the answer beeame a national saxiui;'. like Pinekne^•'s " Mil- 
lions for ilefense. but not one cent for tribute.'" There was 
a slii^ht ditTerence. Taylor was accurately reported. lUiena 
\'ista was a desperate battle. It made Taylor a national 
hero. 

There were two soldiers in Mexico who were boys when 
Washington was President. Taylor and Scott, and General 
Scott had about twelve thousand meti. The fleet brought 
them to \'era Cruz on the 7th of March. 1S47. Then 
began a march from the sea such as the world had not seen 
since Xenophon brought his ten thousand Greeks to the sea 
o\er two thousand years ago. Men are still li\-ing who 
made that march with Scott from \'era Cruz to the l'it\- of 
Mexico, more than two hundred miles. It began on the 
8th of April. 

On the 18th, the arm\- swept through the pass of Cerro 
Gordo, stoiiiiing the heights. lligher. wilder, rougher rose 
the mountains, .ind the long Mexican cannon were pointing 
from abo\e. (.''nward. irresistible, swept the army, thin- 
ning every day from incurable fever and the steady fire 
downpouring from the ambushed enemy. Every day a 
battle .uul .1 x'ictory. 

l>n the loth of August, the army reached the crest of 
the mountains. And caught sight for the first time of Mexico, 
the capital, the"\'enice of the Aztecs," the place which 
Corttis and the conquering Spaniards had sighted and con- 
quered over three hundred years before. 

Never was a capital surrounded by such a maze of 
defenses — impassable swamps and frowning fortresses. But 
one after another the great fortresses were stormed, till at 
last, on the 13th of December, Chapultepec itself, the fort- 
ress which the Mexicans believed impregnable, was taken 
by storm. "The Americans have wings," exclaimed the 
Mexicans, and tied in consternation. On the next day, 



3S4 THE ASPIRATION OF THE WHIGS [1845-1846 

Scott and his conquering army entered the city and camped 
in the famous "Hall of Montezuma." 

Eastern people now for the first time were talking of the 
California country, which many were saying had been dis- 
covered by John C. Fremont. The Oregon migration had 
turned public attention to the Pacific coast. Lewis and 
Clarke, in 1805 ; Pike, in 1806; Major Long, in 1820; Cap- 
tain Bonneville, in 1832 ; Whitman, in 1835 ; traders, scouts, 
hunters and trappers, and immigrants, whose names are 
now forgotten, had been passing into that wonderful coun- 
try now for a dozen years, and news came back telling of 
countless kinds of buffalos, enormous grizzly bears, lofty 
mountains with snow-capped peaks, and natural resources 
unexplored and inexhaustible. 

Into this Eldorado led two trails, by this time plain as 
turnpikes: the Oregon trail, to the northwest; the Santa 
F^, to the southwest. Most of the pioneers had gone over 
the Oregon trail, and it is familiar to us through Francis 
Parkman's famous book, which tells his adventures when, 
fresh from Harvard, he went over this trail in 1844. Two 
years before, Fremont, then a lieutenant in the army, had 
been sent by Congress to find the best route for immigrants 
to the coast. He found the route by the South Pass an 
easy one. During the years 1842, '43, '44, and '45, Fre- 
mont explored the vast region between Texas, Kansas, and 
the coast. He made a map of the country, partly from his 
own observations, partly from Indian and Spanish hearsay. 
His journeys back and forth were full of adventure. They 
stirred the imagination of thousands of people in the East, 
who determined to go to California as soon as the war was 
over. When Fremont, on this third expedition, reached 
Monterey, in the fall of 1845, "American blood had been 
shed on American soil," war was raging, and the Mexican 
authorities ordered him to leave the country at once. 

It was June, 1846. Fremont, of course, did not know 
of the great military operations going on while now he 
was considering the Mexican order. Could he have looked 
down into Kansas, he would have seen a small American 
army, under Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, invading New 
Mexico from Fort Leavenworth, his base of supplies; cap- 



1846] CALIFORNIA 3S5 

turing the old Spanish city Santa F6, and boldly starting 
for the Spanish coast towns, having raised the American 
flag over his conquests and declared the whole country 
American soil. Though Fremont knew nothing of Kearny's 
movements, he unconsciously anticipated that brave sol- 
dier's plans. 

San Francisco was a harbor, but not yet a city. Here 
and there along the coast were Americans, chiefly engaged 
in the fur trade. With slight respect for Mexican authority, 
and no fear of it, this handful of men decided to declare 
California independent. Various names were used for it, 
but the name Bear State struck their fancy, and they raised 
a flag on which was the roughly drawn figure of a bear. A 
part of our navy, under Commodore Stockton, was stationed 
on the Pacific coast at this time. Fremont, Stockton, and 
the founders of the Bear State acted together. Mexico 
was powerless to resist. Just as these things were accom- 
plished, Kearny and his army arrived. The conquest of 
New Mexico and California was complete. 

It was clear to Congress and the country how the Mexi- 
can War was to end. We were bound to acquire extensive 
territory. The Whigs had grumbled against the war, and 
supported it. But the Liberal party, which was increasing 
fast, had protested and opposed it all along. The Presi- 
dent was anxious to bring the war to an end, as Mexico was 
now practically conquered. Our armies had possession of 
New Mexico and California, and California comprised all 
the country between Texas and the Pacific, Mexico would 
be obliged to accept our terms. It would not do to have 
it appear to the world that we had waged a war of conquest 
against a weaker power — our neighbor Mexico. Then, too, 
it was asserted that the whole purpose of the war was to 
gain more territory for slavery. The California country 
would balance the country north of 36*^ 30', from which 
slavery was excluded by the Missouri Compromise. 

When now, on the nth of August, 1846, the President 
sent a special message to Congress asking for an appropri- 
ation of two million dollars "to provide for any expenditure 
necessary to make in advance for the purpose of settling all 
our difficulties with the Mexican Republic," everybody 



386 THE ASPIRATION OF THE WHIGS [1848 

knew that this meant a land-purchase, and a large one. 
David VVilmot, a member of the House from Pennsylvania, 
at once proposed a proviso to the grant: all land bought 
should be free soil. It already was free soil, as Mexico had 
abolished slavery in 1827. After much debate, the appro- 
priation, increased one million dollars, was passed without 
the proviso. 

But Wilmot had succeeded in raising a great issue: 
whether the government of the United States should adopt 
a policy of excluding slavery from the territories. 

On the 2d of February, 1848, the treaty was signed. 
We gave up Mexico, but kept Texas to the Rio Grande, 
and all New Mexico and Upper California. In return, our 
army was withdrawn from Mexico, and the United States 
paid that republic fifteen million dollars, besides assuming 
the debts due from Mexico to the citizens within the terri- 
tory we acquired. 

The new acquisition comprised 522,568 square miles, 
and cost us four and one-half cents an acre. The treaty was 
obscure as to the exact boundary between the two coun- 
tries. The fault was corrected in 1853, by a treaty, negoti- 
ated in December, on the part of the United States, by 
James Gadsden. By its terms, the Masilla Valley was 
purchased, an area of 45,535 square miles, for ten million 
dollars, or thirty-four cents an acre. 

All the new country by Mexican law was free soil. 
Should it remain so? This was the great question in 1848, 
when the people were to hold another presidential election. 

The Democratic party met in national convention at 
Baltimore, in May, 1848, and nominated Lewis Cass, of 
Michigan, and William O. Butler, of Kentucky. The 
Whigs met in convention in Philadelphia, in June, and 
nominated General Taylor, of Louisiana, and Millard Fill- 
more, of New York The Free-Soil party, a new name 
which the old Liberty party and its new supporters had 
taken, met in Buffalo, and nominated ex-President Van 
Buren, and Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts. 
Neither the Democrats nor the Whigs said a word in their 
platform about slavery. The Free-Soilers were outspoken. 
They said that Congress should not interfere with slavery 



1848] FREE SOIL VS. SLAVE SOIL 387 

within the limits of any state, and that "Congress has no 
more power to make a slave than to make a king." It 
should prohibit slavery in the territories, and prevent its 
extension into new ones. The party demanded "cheap 
postage for the people"; river and harbor improvements 
at national expense ; the free grants of public land to actual 
settlers; a tariff suflficient to run the government and pay 
its debts. "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free 
men" was its motto. 

The two old parties adopted no platforms, but stood on 
their record ; the new party was aggressive. 

The Whig candidates received 1,360,601 popular votes 
and 136 electoral votes; the Democratic, 1,220, 544 popular 
and 127 electoral votes; the Free-Soil, 291,263 popular and 
no electoral votes. Congress was Democratic in both 
branches. During Polk's term four states had been 
admitted : 

Florida, March 3, 1845. Slave. 

Texas, December 29, 1845. Slave. 

Iowa, December 28, 1846. Free. 

Wisconsin, May 29, 1848. Free. 

The Union now consisted of fifteen slave and fifteen 
free states. The 4th of March, 1849, ^^^^ o" Sunday. 
Taylor and Fillmore were inaugurated on the 5th, and the 
country was to have a second Whig administration. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

SLAVERY AGITATION 
1848-1860 

In eight years, the vote for slavery restriction had in- 
creased from seven thousand to two hundred and ninety- 
one thousand, and a well-organized party now demanded 
that Congress should make the territories free soil. It 
declared that Congress had no power to interfere with 
slavery within the states. Half of these were slave states. 
West of the free states, beyond the Mississippi, extended 
the vast region north of 36° 30', in which slavery was pro- 
hibited by the compromise of 1820. West of the slave 
states lay the recent acquisition from Mexico, much of it 
south of 36° 30'. It was free soil when acquired. Should 
it be opened or closed to slavery? 

The people of the slave-holding states were united in 
their feelings about the matter. These were their views: 
They complained that the fugitive slave law was persistently 
violated in the North. Fugitive slaves were aided to escape, 
not merely by individuals, but by the legislature and the 
courts. Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Rhode Island had passed laws, popularly called "personal 
liberty bills," which made it an offense of a serious nature 
to assist in capturing or returning fugitive slaves, and the 
state courts in these states would not hear fugitive slave 
cases; they must be heard in the United States courts. 

Abolitionists throughout the North kept up a constant 
and dangerous anti-slavery agitation. They held meetings, 
published books and papers, and sent them into slave 
states, for the purpose of making slave property in- 
secure. Remonstrance by the South was in vain. The 
agitation was becoming more vehement and dangerous 
every day. 

The slave-holding states, equal in number to the free 



1848] ANTI-SLAVERY 3S9 

states, had equal rights under the Constitution. These 
rights were, to settle anywhere with slave property and 
have it protected. The Louisiana and Mexican acqui- 
sitions were due as much to the people of the South as to 
those of the North. The South believed in African slav- 
ery, and that the territories should be open to slavery 
without restriction. Therefore, the Missouri Compromise 
(1820) was all wrong, and a discrimination against the 
South. Congress had no power over slavery whatever. 

The Wilmot proviso was an attack on the South which, 
it said, should be resisted by arms if necessary. Congress 
had no right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia 
without the consent of Maryland and Virginia. Was it 
not time to form a southern confederacy and leave the 
free states to themselves? 

Public feeling in the North was by no means unanimous, 
for the South had many sympathizers there. Those who 
utterly differed from the South in opinion declared again 
and again that they were not its enemy, but the enemy of 
slavery. But anti-slavery feeling on the question of the 
extension of slavery into the territories was decided, and 
ran as follows: 

Congress had power to exclude slavery from the terri- 
tories, because by the Constitution they were wholly under 
its control. This applied to the District of Columbia. 
Not only was this the opinion of the Free-Soilers and 
abolitionists, but of the state legislatures. They passed 
resolution after resolution aflfirming the right and power of 
Congress to keep slavery out of the territories, and many 
of them instructed their Congressmen and requested their 
Senators to vote for the restriction of slavery from the ter- 
ritories. But no legislature gave instructions to vote for 
the abolition of slavery within the slave-holding states. 
At this time the slave trade flourished in the District of 
Columbia. The northern members of Congress were 
instructed to vote for its abolition. 

The anti-slavery people of the North complained that 
anti-slavery literature was thrown out of the southern 
mails, in violation of right, if not of law; that men who 
opposed slavery were in danger of their lives, and that 



390 SLAVERY AGITATION [1S4S-1S49 

some, like Elijah P. Lovejoy,* had been murdered for 
their opinions, and that from 1836 to 1S44 Congress had 
refttsed to entertain anti-slaver)- petitions, under the "gag 
rule." 

The abolitionists asserted that the "personal liberty 
bills" were just; that slaver}' was wrong: that the whole 
country ought to be free soil; and that the Missouri Com- 
promise merely made a wicked concession, and ought to be 
repealed. 

But only a small portion of the people of the North 
were abolitionists. They insisted that the Free-Soil party 
did not go far enough, as it said nothing against slaven,- 
within the states. Slaven,- ought to be destroyed. The 
Free-Soilers said: ** Exclude it forever from the territo- 
ries." 

Thus on the subject of slaver\- the people of the 
United States in 1S49 were much divided. Up to the 
28th of January, 1848. the question of forbidding or per- 
mitting slaver}- in the territories, though a critical was not 
a pressing question. The news of that day suddenly changed 
the histon,- of the Far West and made slavery in the terri- 
tories and in the states the most important question for the 
nation to settle. 

On that January day, a millwright named Marshall, 
who had come to the coast from New Jersey, while at work 
on a millrace for Captain Sutter, near Sutter's fort, on the 
American River, a fork of the Sacramento, saw yellow par- 
ticles in the loose mud and gravel brought down by the 
water. Suspecting its nature, he collected specimens and 
carried them to his employer. Sutter made a few rude but 
reliable tests and pronounced the particles gold. The secret 
could not be kept. First, a Mormon laborer suspected, 
and then proved the discover}'. Then the news spread up 
and down the valley, up and down the coast ; over Cali- 
fornia, along the trails of the Mississippi Valley ; over the 

♦Rev. Elij.ih P. Lovejoy was murdered at .\lton, Illinois, Novem- 
ber 7, 1S37, while defending his newspaper. The Obser\-er, against a 
pavslaven.- mob. Tlie changes wrought by time are suggested: on 
November 7. lSo7. a monument of colossal prv>{x^rtions was erecteti to 
his memorv on the bluff at Alton, and Lieuteuant-Goveruor Northc^Kt 
made an address on behalf of the State. 



1S40I CALIFORNIA ANP rUK INION 391 

East, the North, and the South : to Europe and Asia and 
AustraHa. and so over the whole world. 

Never did news work a more sudden transformation. 
Nearly a year passed before President Polk told the news 
to Congress, but by that time the rush for the mines was 
well under wa\-. In less than a year and a half, two hun- 
dred thousand men had reached California. Sutter's saw- 
mill was converted into a hotel, and routed for thirty 
thousand dollars a year. Cities sprang up in a few months. 
Civil government was for a time in abeyance. But the 
instinct of the American is for law and order. The men of 
California sent delegates to a convention at Monterey in 
September, 1S49. "i^^^^^ ^ state constitution, and asked for 
admission into the Union. President Ta\-lor had advised 
them to do so. The new state would be the thirty-first, 
and either the sixteenth free or the sixteenth slave state. 
It asked for admission as a free state. 

The request for admission complicated the sla\ory ques- 
tion. Its admission would break the equality of the states 
in the Senate, whose sixty members were equally divided 
as representatives of fifteen free and fifteen slave states, and 
give the free states thirt\--two Senators. In the House the 
free states already had one hundred and thirty-nine mem- 
bers; the slave states ninety-one. The differences between 
the North and the South, specified a few paragraphs back, 
were now keen and critical. Would the South consent to 
another free state, in California, which extended far south 
of 36*^ 30'? Was the Union to be broken up? 

As in 1820 and in 1S35, Henry Clay now came forward 
with a compromise measure, which proposed to admit Cali- 
fornia at once as a free state; to abolish the slave trade, but 
not slaver}-, in the District of Columbia; to make a more 
severe and eft"ective fugitive slave law. to organize Utah 
and New Mexico as territories, with no mention of slavery, 
and to buy from Texas all she claimed of New Mexico and 
thus fill the empty treasury of that state. 

It may be noticed that the first and second propositions 
faxored anti-slavery- men; the third and fourth favored 
pro-slavery men. ; the fifth made the fourth possible and 
put mono)- into the empty treasury of Texas. 



392 SLAVERY AGITATION [1849 

The question of admitting the thirty-first state into the 
Union came before the thirty-first Congress. Its oldest 
members were now old men, who were children when Wash- 
ington was President. Most eminent of this group, in the 
Senate, were Clay and Webster, Benton and Calhoun; of 
those whose memory went back to Madison's administration 
were Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine; John P. Hale, of New 
Hampshire; William H. Seward, of New York; William L. 
Dayton, of New Jersey"; James M. Mason, of Virginia; 
Willie P. Mangum, of North Carolina; Thomas Corwin and 
Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; 
Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and Lewis Cass, of Michi- 
gan. 

In the House, among the men who recalled the War of 
18 12 vividly, and who were now in middle life, were: 
Robert C, Winthrop, of Massachusetts; Thaddeus Stevens 
and David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania: Howell Cobb, Alex- 
ander H. Stephens, and Robert Toombs, of Georgia; Jacob 
Thompson, of Mississippi; Joshua R. Giddings and Robert 
C. Schenck, of Ohio; Humphrey Marshall, of Kentucky; 
Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, and Edward D. Baker, of 
Illinois. The thirty-first Congress contained a large number 
of the most famous men our country has produced. Some 
of them were as old as the government. Webster, Clay, and 
Calhoun were in the Senate together for the last time. A 
little younger than they were the men who were soon to 
take their places as leaders: Seward, Chase, and Davis. 

Clay, in February, opened the great debate with an 
explanatory speech, and in a second, discussed the all- 
absorbing theme of his resolutions, with unsurpassed fire 
and all the fascinating power with which, though now an 
old man, he had in former years moved the multitude. 
March followed with three speeches that have gone into 
history. Calhoun came from his sick-chamber and listened, 
"like some disembodied spirit reviewing the deeds of the 
flesh," while Senator Mason read his speech for him on 
the 4th of March. It was Calhoun's last word. 

"I have, Senators, believed from the first," said he, 
"that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not 
prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in 



1850] COMPROMISE 393 

disunion." He said that the equiHbrium between the 
North and the South had been destroyed by the ordinance of 
1787; by the Missouri Compromise; by the various tariffs 
for protection; by the ascendency of the North in the gov- 
ernment; by anti-slavery agitations since 1835, ^.nd by 
refusal to carry out the fugitive slave law. If differences 
between the two sections could not be settled "on the 
broad principles of justice and duty, . . . "let the 
states . . . agree to separate and part in peace." 

On the 7th of March, Webster spoke. The law of 
nature, he said, excluded slavery from California and New 
Mexico; they were mostly arid wastes; their barren moun- 
tains were capped with perennial snow. Taking up the 
complaints of the South, he found the South right and the 
North wrong, and particularly in refusing to carry out 
the fugitive slave law, and in permitting abolition agita- 
tions. 

Seward spoke on the nth. "California," said he, "is 
already a complete and fully appointed state." He 
answered Calhoun's speech in detail. He declared that 
the compromise proposed would not restore the equilibrium 
between the North and the South. "The states are not 
parties to the Constitution as states; it is the Constitution 
of the people of the United States." "Slavery is only a 
temporary, accidental, partial, and incongruous " institu- 
tion. "Freedom," on the contrary, is a perpetual, or- 
ganic, universal one, in harmony with the Constitution of 
the United States. . . . You may separate slavery from 
South Carolina, and the state will still remain ; but if you 
subvert freedom there, the state will cease to exist. But 
there is a higher law than the Constitution," the law of 
nature, of justice, of liberty. 

Nearly every prominent member of Congress spoke. 
Finally, on the 19th of April, Clay's resolutions were given 
over to a committee of thirteen, of which he was chairman, 
and which reported on the 8th of May. Bills were duly 
prepared to carry out its report, and after much further 
debate, were enacted as laws on the 9th of September. 

California was admitted as a free state. Texas was 
given its present boundaries, and received ten million dol- 



394 SLAVERY AGITATION [1850 

lars for the portion of New Mexico it claimed. New 
Mexico and Utah were organized as territories. When 
admitted as states, they should be received "with or with- 
out slavery," as their constitution might prescribe at the 
time of this admission. A more effective fugitive slave 
law* was passed and signed by the President, September 
18, 1850. 

On the 9th of July, while the excitement of the debate 
was at its height, President Taylor died, and was succeeded 
by Millard Fillmore. He called Webster into his Cabinet 
as Secretary of State. Calhoun died on the last day of 
March. Clay was left in the Senate, the last of the great 
"triumvirate," as Webster, Calhoun, and Clay are some- 
times called. 

The idea carried in the bills for Utah and New Mexico 
was new — that slavery might or might not exist as their 
constitutions might declare. This took away from Con- 
gress its power to grant or to refuse admission, merely 
because a new state constitution was slave or free. It did 
not settle the question whether, in 1850, slavery could 
exist in either of these territories. The long debate brought 
out the general admission that that question could be settled 
only by the Supreme Court. 

In the North, the most unpopular part of the compro- 
mise was the new fugitive slave act. There, it was commonly 
remarked, "this law makes every one a slave-catcher," 
But the law pleased the South. Many a fugitive was caught 
and thousands of free negroes lived in terror of seizure. 
Rescues became common. Hatred of the law became so 
strong, personal liberty bills were enacted or re-enacted by 
Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, f Maine, Massachu- 
setts, and Michigan,:}: and later by Wisconsin, Kansas, § 
Ohio, II and Pennsylvania. T" The fugitive slave law did 
more than anything else to make the North anti-slavery. 

Early in June, 1852, the Democrats met in national 
convention, at Baltimore, and nominated Franklin Pierce, 
of New Hampshire, and William R. King, of Alabama. 
Their platform declared that Congress has no power to 

♦This law was signed by President Fillmore. 

ti854. 11855, §1858. II 1859. II1860. 



1S52] PARTY PLATFORMS 395 

charter a national bank, nor to interfere with nor control 
the domestic institutions of the states. The Kentucky 
and Virginia resolutions and Madison's reports to the Vir- 
ginia legislature, in 1799, were the main foundations of 
the Democratic party's creed. 

The party promised to adhere to the compromise of 
1850, but earnestly asserted that the efforts of the abolition- 
ists ought not to be countenanced. 

Later in June, the Whig convention met at Baltimore, 
and nominated Winfield Scott, of New Jersey, and William 
A. Graham, of North Carolina. The platform declared 
that the Constitution vested Congress with power to 
make internal improvements, and that as the compromise 
of 1850 settled all the questions it embraced, there should 
be no more agitation of the slavery question. American 
industries should be encouraged by a tariff law, but indirect 
taxes should be preferred to direct taxes. 

In August, the Free-Soil convention assembled at Pitts- 
burg, and called the new party "The Free Democracy of 
the United States." The platform declared that there 
should be "no more slave states, no slave territory, no 
nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the 
extradition of slaves." 

"Slavery is a sin; Christianity, humanity, and patriot- 
ism demand its abolition." "The fugitive slave act of 
1850 is repugnant to the Constitution, to the principles of 
common law, and to the sentiments of the civilized world." 
It should be repealed at once. "The compromise of 1850 
is unjust, oppressive, unconstitutional" and "inconsistent 
with the principles and maxims of Democracy." "Slavery 
is sectional; freedom, national." The general government 
should totally separate from slavery and leave it to the 
states. Congress should make internal improvements, im- 
migration from Europe should be encouraged, and free 
persons of color should be protected like other citizens. 

The Democratic candidates were elected, receiving 
1,601,474 popular votes and 254 electoral votes. The 
Whig candidates received 1,386,578 popular votes and 42 
electoral votes. The Free-Soil candidates received 156, 149 
popular votes, but no electoral votes. Thirty-one states 



396 SLAVERY AGITATION [1850-1854 

voted, California having been admitted September 9, 1850. 
Both branches of Congress were Democratic. On the 4th 
of March, 1853, Pierce was inaugurated. People all over 
the country were weary of disputes about slavery. "I fer- 
vently hope that the question is at rest," said Pierce in his 
inaugural, "and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical 
excitement may again threaten the durability of our Con- 
stitution." 

On the 29th of June, 1852, Henry Clay died, in Wash- 
ington, and on the 24th of October, Daniel Webster died, 
on his farm at Marshfield. It seemed as if the pillars of 
the state had fallen. The country was reminded, as by 
an electric shock, that the nation was on new ground; 
that Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, and their measures, 
were of the past; that new men and new measures had 
arisen, and that the three great statesmen, after twenty 
years of most persistent effort, had not settled the slavery 
question. 

A few days after the death of Clay, appeared a power- 
ful novel, picturing plantation "life among the lowly." It 
was called Uncle Tom's Cabin, and was written by Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, Never before did an American story meet 
with such a reception. Over three hundred thousand copies 
were sold before the summer was past. It was translated 
into foreign tongues and was received by the whole reading 
world. It was dramatized. Young and old read it with 
equal zeal, and the world has gone on reading it ever since. 
It appeared just as Webster and Clay departed, and when 
Whigs and Democrats were hugging the belief that the 
slavery question was forever settled. It was the first 
American book that everybody read, and it made more 
votes for free soil and abolition than the eloquence of 
Wendell Phillips, the poetry of Whittier, the protests and 
appeals of William Lloyd Garrison, and all other anti-slav- 
ery agencies combined. 

When Pierce became President, the country north and 
west of Missouri to the Rocky Mountains had no govern- 
ment. Stephen A. Douglas, a Senator from Illinois, and 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, reported 
a bill, in January, 1854, to organize the Territory of Ne- 



1 854] KANSAS, NEBRASKA 397 

braska, with ar without slavery, as the people of the terri- 
tory might choose. As the region was north of 36° 30', 
the bill virtually repealed the Missouri Compromise. So, 
instead of being "forever settled," the slavery question 
suddenly came up, as hard to settle as ever. 

The Free-Soil Senators made so stern an opposition to 
the bill, that its author abandoned it and brought in another 
which created two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, which 
repealed the Missouri Compromise and made the whole 
country west of the Mississippi and north of 36° 50' either 
slave soil or free, as the people there might wish. The bill 
became a law May 30, 1854. Douglas and his supporters 
defended the law, as founded on the right of the people to 
choose their own state institutions. This right he called 
"popular sovereignty." The Free-Soil leaders, Seward, 
Chase, Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens, opposed the bill 
because it opened the territories to slavery. 

As the law left the question of slavery to be settled by 
the people of the new territories, the result would depend 
on which class of people should first gain possession and 
control of them. The strange spectacle was presented of 
a race between the North and the South for the possession 
of Kansas. The neighboring state, Missouri, was slave- 
holding, and its population had the advantage of nearness. 
At once the rush began. Hundreds crossed the Missouri 
and staked their claims. The principal town of the pro- 
slavery emigrants was called Atchison, after David R. 
Atchison, a Senator from Missouri, and acting Vice-Presi- 
dent of the United States. 

The anti-slavery people were equally active all through 
the North. The New England Emigrant Aid Society sent 
hundreds of settlers, and these were joined by scores from 
New Yoi'k, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The anti-slavery 
people named their principal town after Amos S. Lawrence, 
of Boston, the secretary of the New England society. By 
November, 1854, Kansas was held by two hostile popula- 
tions, with guns in their hands and antagonistic political 
ideas in their heads. In March, 1855, an election of a 
territorial legislature and of local officers was held. It 
resulted in the choice of pro-slavery men. The anti-slav- 



398 SLAVERY AGITATION [1S54-1S55 

eiy men declared that the election was a farce ; that only 
pro-slavery votes were allowed, and that there were many 
times as many votes counted as there were men, women, 
and children in Kansas. Armed men came over in com- 
panies from Missouri, stuffed the ballot-boxes, and carried 
the election. The legislature thus chosen met at Pawnee, 
hastily adopted the slave code of Missouri, and organized 
the territory as slave soil. 

With equal energy, the anti-slavery men quickly chose 
delegates to a convention at Topeka, in October, 1855, 
framed a state constitution forbidding slavery, sent it to 
the people for ratification, claimed that it was ratified, 
elected a legislature, a governor, judges, and other state 
officers, organized a state government, chose two United 
States Senators and a delegate to Congress, sent their state 
constitution to Congress, and asked to be admitted into the 
Union. The pro-slavery people of Kansas, and their friends 
over the country, claimed that no pro-slavery man was per- 
mitted to vote against the Topeka constitution. 

The Kansas difificulties, the failure of the compromise 
of 1850 to stay settled, the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise in 1854, and the sudden increase in foreign immi- 
gration, now compelled a reorganization of political parties. 
The fundamental question was, Shall any limit be put on 
slavery in the territories? 

It divided the Whigs; those in the North said "Yes," 
those in the South said "No," but as the Whig party was 
weak in the South, the question broke up the party. It 
divided the Democrats. Many in the North said "Yes," 
all in the South said "No." The northern Democrats 
called themselves anti-Nebraska men, and joined with the 
northern Whigs, all taking the new party name. 

The Free-Soilers, northern Whigs, and anti-Nebraska 
men had enough in common to unite. This the}- did gen- 
erally throughout the North, and gradually they took the 
name Republicans. Many towns still claim to be the birth- 
place of the Republican party. It dates from the summer 
of 1S54. Meetings called "Republican" assembled that 
year in Jackson, Michigan; Ripon, Wisconsin; and later, 
at Freeport, Illinois. That many towns claim the first 



1856] A NEW PARTY 399 

Republican meeting shows that the new movement was 
widespread from Vermont to Wisconsin, 

For fifteen years, opposition to foreign immigration and 
to the election of persons of foreign birth to office had been 
gaining strength throughout the slave-holding states, and 
in most of the free-soil states. Men who carried this oppo- 
sition into politics called themselves members of the 
American party. It was largely a secret organization. Its 
members simply voted against foreigners when they could. 
They were called "Know-Nothings," from their common 
answer when asked about their votes. It contained pro- 
slavery and anti-slavery men. It was strong in fourteen 
states. In 1856 it felt itself able to become a national 
party. On the question of slavery it was hopelessly 
divided. To the great question that faced the country, 
some of its members answered "Yes," others, "No." 

The American party, or "Know-Nothings," met in 
convention at Philadelphia, in February, and nominated 
ex-President Fillmore and Andrew J. Donelson, of Ten- 
nessee. Their platform was substantially contained in 
their declaration, "Americans must rule America," and in 
their protest against "reopening sectional agitation by the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise"; but this last state- 
ment drove many southern "Know-Nothings, "out of the 
party. 

The Democrats met in convention at Cincinnati early 
in June, and nominated James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, 
and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky. Their platform 
advocated non-interference by Congress with slavery in 
state or territory, or in the District of Columbia, and popu- 
lar sovereignty in the territories. 

The new party, the Republicans, held their convention 
in Philadelphia, in June, and nominated John C. Fremont, 
of California, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, on a 
platform demanding that Kansas be at once admitted as 
a free state, that a railroad to the Pacific be built by the 
aid of the federal government, and that Congress prohibit 
slavery in the territories. 

Of the popular votes, Buchanan and Breckenridge 
received 1,838,169; of the electoral votes, 174; Fremont 



400 SLAVERY AGITATION [1857 

and Dayton received 114 electoral votes and 1,341,264 
popular votes; Fillmore and Donelson received 874,534 
popular votes and 8 electoral votes. Both houses of Con- 
gress were Democratic. But the anti-slaverA- people, though 
defeated, looked over the record of anti-slavery votes since 
1840. They found: 

James G. Birney, 1S40, 7,059. 
James G. Biniey, 1S44, 62,300. 
Alartin Van Buren, 1S4S, 291,263. 
John P. Hale, 1S52. 156,149. 
John C. Fremont, 1S56, 1,341,264. 

And when they had read the list, they took courage. 

Buchanan was inaugurated March 4. 1857. 

Thirty-one years before Buchanan was inaugurated, a 
slave named Dred Scott, in Missouri, was taken by his 
master, an army surgeon, to Fort Snelling, in Minnesota; 
later he was taken to Illinois and back to Missouri. His 
master punished him. Ho sued for assault and battery, and 
his freedom, in the Missouri courts, on the ground that 
residence in a free state made him a free man. He won 
his case in the lower ^lissouri court, appealed it to the 
highest court in the state and lost it. He then appealed 
to the United States court in Missouri, which gave no 
decision, but passed the case on to the United States 
Supreme Court. The case was twice argued. A decision 
was reached two days after Buchanan became President. 

The court held that the United States courts had no 
jurisdiction whatever in the matter. The decision of the 
highest state court must be considered as final. But the 
United States Supreme Court did not stop with mere- 
ly dismissing the case for want of jurisdiction. From 
the court, greatly divided and disagreeing among its mem- 
bers, there now came several opinions on the slavery- 
question. 

The United States was not for all purposes a nation ; 
the Constitution was a compact by the states; Congress 
had no control whatever over slaver}'; the ordinance of 
1787 was unconstitutional, and so was the Missouri Com- 
promise, 1820. As to the slave Dred Scott the court 
held that he was property, not a person ; he could not 



1857-1858] LINCOLN, DOUGLAS 401 

become a person in any court; he belonged to a race infe- 
rior and subject to the white man. 

The pro-slavery people of the country received the 
decision with joy. They inquired, "What more can be 
asked than the decision of the Supreme Court?" Why 
should they not be pleased? It opened every inch of land 
west of the original thirteen states to slavery, and made 
freedom sectional and slavery national. 

Meanwhile, the contest in Kansas had raged with undi- 
minished violence. Armed men kept pouring into the terri- 
tory from the North and the South, but for every man 
South, the North had two, so that Kansas contained more 
foes than friends of slavery. In September, 1857, the pro- 
slavery element met in convention at Lecompton, and made 
a constitution which contained two provisions that never 
again were to appear in an American constitution, that an 
American commonwealth is "a free, independent, and 
sovereign state," and that the right of property in man — 
the right to hold slaves — is inviolable. 

The pro-slavery clause of this constitution was submitted 
to the voters, and the pro-slavery men claimed that it was 
ratified by a majority of nearly six thousand votes, but the 
anti-slavery men claimed that it was rejected by over ten 
thousand votes. Congress thus had two constitutions from 
Kansas: one permitting, the other forbidding, slavery. 
President Buchanan, in a special message to Congress, 
February 2, 1858, urged it to accept the Lecompton con- 
stitution. But a great change had come over public opin- 
ion ; the House of Representatives, elected in 1858, was 
Republican. 

The term of one-third of the Senators came to an end 
on the 4th of March, 1859, ^^"^^ ^^'^^ legislature chosen in 
1858 would elect their successors. Among these Senators 
was Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and he was a candi- 
date for re-election. The Republicans of Illinois met in 
convention at Springfield, in June, and named Abraham 
Lincoln, of Illinois, as their "first and only choice" for a 
successor to Douglas in the Senate. At the convention 
which nominated him, Mr. Lincoln, on the 17th of June, 
made a speech of which this was the beginning: 



403 SLAVERY AGITATION [1S57-1858 

"If we could first know where we are and whither we 
are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to 
do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy- 
was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise 
of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the oper- 
ation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, 
but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not 
cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 
'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe 
this government cannot endure permanently half slave and 
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I 
do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will 
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the 
other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the 
further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall 
rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinc- 
tion, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall 
become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, 
north as well as south." Lincoln then continued in an 
exhaustive discussion of the political issues. 

To this speech Douglas replied, later, at Chicago. Lin- 
coln then replied to Douglas. He replied to Lincoln, at 
Bloomington. Lincoln answered him at Springfield. Then 
a series of joint debates was arranged between them. 
Douglas designated the places and the dates, and opened 
the debate at Ottawa, August 21; it was continued at 
Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston. Galesburg. Ouincy. and 
Alton, and closed October 15. The great questions of 
the day were discussed. These were, the extension of 
slavery into the territories, the Dred Scott decision, and 
popular sovereignty. Douglas was re-elected to the Sen- 
ate. The debate attracted national attention, and remains 
the most celebrated political debate in our histor}\ 

Among the anti-slavers' men who went from New York 
to Kansas in 1855 was John Brown, and he went equipped 
to fight slavery. He was compelled to leave in 1858, and 
went to Harper's Ferry, Virginia. He had long been plan- 
ning a scheme to make slave property so insecure that 
nobody could afford to possess it. At Harper's Ferry, in 
October, 1859, he suddenly, with the help of a dozen fol- 



1859] JOHN BROWN 403 

lowers, seized and held the United States armoty. He 
intended to arm the negroes and start a slave insurrection. 
He was deceived in his plans. The slaves did not flock to 
him. He was speedily overpowered by a company of regu- 
lar troops, commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee; was 
indicted for murder and treason against the state of Vir- 
ginia; was found guilty, and hanged at Charlestown, Decem- 
ber 2, 1859. The anti-slavery people considered him a 
martyr; the pro-slavery people spoke of him as a murderer, 
a traitor, and an inciter of a servile insurrection. 

On the 23d of April, the first of the great nominating 
conventions, the Democratic, met in Charleston, South 
Carolina. Divisions appeared as soon as the convention 
tried to adopt a platform. A majority insisted that the 
right to hold slaves could not be impaired by Congress or 
by a territorial legislature, and that it was the duty of Con- 
gress to protect slavery everywhere. A minority insisted 
that it would abide by the decision of the Supreme Court. 
The division broke up the convention, though both sections 
agreed that Cuba should be annexed; that the "personal 
liberty acts" were unconstitutional; that the fugitive slave 
law should be more faithfully executed, and that the Pacific 
railroad should be built with some aid from the general 
government. 

The majority, the "Douglas" Democrats, adjourned to 
Baltimore, where in June they nominated Stephen A. 
Douglas, of Illinois, and Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia. 
The "Breckenridge" Democrats also adjourned to Balti- 
more, and in June nominated John C. Breckenridge, of 
Kentucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon. 

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Union party met in 
Baltimore, in May, and nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, 
and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. They advocated 
"the Constitution of the country, the union of the states, 
and the enforcement of the laws." 

In the same month, the Republicans held their conven- 
tion in Chicago, and nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illi- 
nois, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. Their platform 
proclaimed that, "That new dogma that the Constitution 
of its own force carries slavery into any or all of the terri- 



404 SLAVERY AGITATION [i860 

tories is a dangerous political heresy." The normal con- 
dition of all the territory of the United States is that of 
freedom. Congress has no authority to give legal existence 
to slavery in any territory of the United States. The 
African slave trade should not be reopened. Kansas should 
be admitted a free state. Congress should conduct internal 
improvements, and among them, help build a railroad to 
the Pacific coast. It should enact a homestead law. 

Lincoln and Hamlin received 180 electoral and 1,865,913 
popular votes; Breckenridge and Lane received 72 electoral 
and 848,404 popular votes; Bell and Everett received 39 
electoral votes and 591,900 popular votes; Douglas and 
Johnson received 1,347,664 popular votes, but only 12 
electoral votes. Thus Lincoln and Hamlin received a 
majority of the electoral vote and a plurality of the popular 
vote. Each branch of Congress had a large Republican 
majority. Thirty-three states voted. Minnesota had been 
admitted May 11, 1858; Oregon, February 14, 1859; both 
free. Lincoln was inaugurated March 4, 1861. The new 
ideals which he represented will be better understood if we 
glance for a moment at the condition of the country and 
the life of its people since 1830. 



CHAPTER XXX 

STATE SOVEREIGNTY 

1776-1860 

In an unpublished letter of Jefferson's occurs one of 
the earliest descriptions of national parties. It was written 
to John Wise, of Virginia, February 12, 1798, from Fran- 
cis's hotel, late the Indian Queen, on Fourth Street, Phila- 
delphia, where the Vice-President at the time lodged, and 
was accustomed to confer with his political associates. 
Wise had written demanding why Jefferson, in a recent 
conversation, had spoken of him "as of Tory politics." 
Jefferson's reply defined the radical difference between the 
parties of his day, and was a prophecy of the essential 
difference between them for a century to come. "It is 
now understood that two political sects have arisen within 
the United States — the one believing that the executive is 
the branch of our government which more needs support; 
the other, that, like the analogous branch in the English 
government, it is already too strong for the republican parts 
of the Constitution; and therefore, in equivocal cases, they 
incline to the legislative power; the former of these are 
called Federalists, sometimes Aristocrats or Monocrats, and 
sometimes Tories, after the corresponding sect in the Eng- 
lish government of the same definition ; the latter are styled 
Republicans, Whigs, Jacobins, Anarchists, Disorganizers, 
&c. ; these terms are in familiar use with most persons ; . . . 
both parties claim to be Federalists and Republicans, and 
I believe in. truth as to the great mass of them, these 
appellations designate neither exclusively, and all others 
are slanders except those of Whig and Tory, which 
alone characterize the distinguishing principles of the 
two sects." * Probably in this letter is the first form of 
the famous sentence in Jefferson's first inaugural, six 

*See The American Historical Review for April, 1898. 

40s 



4o6 STATE SOVEREIGNTY [i 776-1860 

years later: "We are all Republicans; we are all Feder- 
alists." 

Party differences in 1798 were in great measure a con- 
tinuation of the long colonial struggle between assemblies 
and royal governors. The Revolution developed and inten- 
sified the cause of these differences, but until about the 
time when Jefferson retired from Washington's Cabinet 
the characteristic struggle of the century — that between 
the supporters of a strong legislative and a strong execu- 
tive — had not effected party organization. This awaited a 
master mind, a manager of men. Jefferson, more than any 
other man of his generation, was a party organizer. He 
had quite perfected his work before he wrote his brief defi- 
nition of parties. 

He had witnessed the triumph of the assemblies and the 
flight of the governors. He had participated in establish- 
ing a lawful succession to the overthrown colonial execu- 
tives, in the persons of governors for the states, and had 
served as chief executive of Virginia. But from the day when 
Congress first assembled it became the rival of the state 
legislatures and the object of their constant attack. Again 
the assemblies triumphed, and before a dozen years passed, 
Congress could not maintain a quorum. But the powers 
of the states in no wise diminished. They rested on an 
industrial foundation ; they levied and collected taxes; they 
executed laws. However, the most difficult, the first step 
toward nationality had been taken ; the national organism 
could not be destroyed. Economic necessity forced the 
legislatures to send delegates to the Philadelphia conven- 
tion, to propose a form of government "adequate to the 
exigencies of the Union," and this body of unequaled men, 
taught by fear, expediency, and experience, refused to rest 
the fate of the new Constitution in the hands of the legis- 
latures, but placed it in conventions specially chosen to 
consider it. The legislatures were outwitted, but the Con- 
stitution was saved. The new government was inaugurated, 
and, true to its plan, was maintained independently of them. 
But the states looked upon the new government as their 
own creation, whose functions and powers were obscure. 
When Jefferson wrote this letter, the new government was 



1776-18O0J THE STATE LEGISLATURES 407 

in its tenth year. Practical administration was interpreting 
the so-called "supreme law of the land," Certainly no 
one need doubt of its limited character. Were not restric- 
tions placed on Congress by eleven amendments ; and were 
not ten of these the familiar provisions of the state bills of 
rights? Were not the legislatures the representatives of the 
paramount democracy of the land? The state constitutions 
determined who were citizens, who were electors. Not one 
of them set limits within which the legislature must act. 
These legislatures came down in unbroken succession from 
colonial assemblies, of which the first had met on a July 
day at Jamestown a hundred and seventy years before 
Washington was inaugurated. Had he not accepted the 
presidency the new government might have failed for lack 
of men. The people had confidence in their state govern- 
ments and in Washington ; they cared little for the govern- 
ment of the United States. It was not to establish this 
that Lexington and Yorktown were fought. Independence 
was sought and won that every man might enjoy his rights 
and liberties, and these were secured by the state constitu- 
tions. In popular conception, individualism was the chief 
corner-stone of American democracy. An act of Congress 
in the least curtailing the popular notion of individual rights 
and liberties was bound to provoke organized opposition. 
Undoubtedly, at this time, an exaggerated idea of personal 
liberty tended, in some parts of the country, to take the 
form of individualism gone mad. In the isolated rural dis- 
tricts along the frontier a strange notion of liberty prevailed. 
It was not thought of at the commercial centers. The law 
and order that prevailed in Boston, in New York, in Phila- 
delphia, and in Charleston, were not the law and order that 
were respected beyond the Alleghanies, in Pennsylvania 
and Virginia, in the Carolinas, or in Kentucky and Tennes- 
see. Yet this valorous western individualism was not crass 
ruffianism. The sons and daughters of the East had settled 
the West. Men of affairs there were not infrequently the 
sons of pronounced Federalists in the older states. But in 
changing their habitation the young men of New England, 
New York, and Pennsylvania who w^ere now building up 
the Northwest Territory, and they from Viuginia and the 



4o8 STATE SOVEREIGNTY [i 776-1 860 

Carolinas who were now citizxns of Kentucky and Tennes- 
see, had also changed their politics. To them the govern- 
ment of the United States seemed far away, and at best 
only an experiment. What had it done for the West other 
than to interfere with trade and increase taxes? It was not 
an incongruous idea to include Federalists and Indians 
among the public enemies of the West, and he who called 
his neighbor a Federalist had to answer by the code, or, if 
the deeply injured citizen took the trouble to sue for libel, 
he would undoubtedly be awarded very handsome damages 
by any jury. 

Ten years of federal legislation had further estranged 
the discontented throughout the country. Whether Jeffer- 
son himself ever believed that the Federalists were laying 
plans for a monarchy may be doubted. He was careful not 
to correct the spread of the delusion, however, and labored 
night and day to make political capital out of it. The 
indictment against the Federalists was long and carefully 
drawn, and had been presented to a grand jury eager to 
find a true bill. This jury was the party d-escribed by 
Jefferson as favoring the legislative rather than the execu- 
tive. By this was meant not merely opposition to Presi- 
dent Adams. The new party was founded on the state 
idea. It was opposed to a strong national government — 
executive, legislative, and judicial. It disapproved of 
Jay's treaty. It hated Washington's policy of neutrality, 
and considered Citizen Genet a deeply injured man. It 
drank rivers of health for France, and pronounced strange 
abominations against England. It was ever on the watch 
for "the harbinger of approaching monarchy" in every act 
of Congress, every proclamation by the President, every 
decision of John Jay and his court. 

A political crisis was at hand. The alien and sedition 
acts were rapidly under way. Every step in their progress 
was published throughout the South and West. No acts 
of the high Federalists had attracted so many and such 
hostile eyes. It was the plain people who were watching, 
and no man knew them so well as Jefferson. He knew, 
probably better than Emerson, that the state at some time 
is a private thought, and on this axiom he builded, perhaps 



1 776-1860] EARLY PARTIES 409 

better than he knew. He saw individualism at the bottom 
of our political institutions, and to this he addressed his 
genius for organization. Cunning and time-tried instru- 
ments were at his disposal. The caucus, the committees 
of correspondence, the convention, the mass-meeting, were 
of recent revolutionary invention; the town-meeting and 
the assemblies had been in service more than a century and 
a half. His plan was simple, popular, and practical. His 
ideas should be exploited by each of these organizations, 
but should receive their crowning influence in the resolu- 
tions of the state legislatures. Then, and not till then, 
would the issue be clear to the people, and the two great 
forces in American government be brought face to face — 
the states and the federal government. Like all founders 
of a political system, he first formulated the system, and 
then instilled its principles into the minds of a few chosen 
disciples. Chief of these was Madison, then Monroe and 
Levi Lincoln, and Gallatin and Breckenridge, and the 
brothers Nicholas, and Robert Smith, of Maryland, and 
Gideon Granger, of Connecticut. These and a few more 
were the privileged few admitted into close personal confi- 
dence, but his persuasive friendships ran all over the coun- 
try, among men of every profession and occupation. The 
correspondence which he kept up with his followers places 
him almost at the head of the world's voluminous letter- 
writers. 

His letter to Wise defining political parties was written 
amidst the excitement of the passage of the alien and sedi- 
tion laws. Was a free American silently to endure such 
legislation? Could any lover of liberty suffer any odious 
high Federalist to indict a freeman for libel, force him to 
pay a fine of two thousand dollars and lie in jail two years, 
because he spoke his mind about the President or Congress? 
Was he tamely to submit to indictment for conspiracy and 
sedition because he had met with his friends, some of whom 
perhaps were alien-born? And must he suffer imprison- 
ment for five years and pay a fine of five thousand dollars 
for exercising rights guaranteed in every state constitution 
and in the federal Constitution itself? What had become 
of the right of free speech and a free press? Surely it was 



4IO STATE SOVEREIGNTY [1776-1800 

not the exclusive property of the Federalist party. Jefferson 
knew that the time had come for an active organization of 
the opposition, and he now could effect it on constitutional 
ground. 

Communications had for months been appearing in the 
anti-administration newspapers which pointed the way that 
ideas were moving, George Nicholas, soon to deliver the 
great speech in Congress on the repeal of the acts, now 
published in the Kentucky Gazette his opinion on their 
constitutionality, and also his political creed. He gave 
utterance to the thought of Kentucky, for he had more 
influence there than the whole Federalist party. Briefer 
communications appeared in other papers, and resolutions 
attacking the acts were passed in public meetings both in 
Kentucky and Virginia. With few variations, these fol- 
lowed one original. When sent up to the legislature, they 
seemed the spontaneous thought of the people of the two 
commonwealths. 

On the 7th of November, Brcckenridge presented a set 
of resolutions to the Kentucky legislature, which passed on 
the i6th, after a brief debate. Jefferson claimed to be 
their author. A manuscript original in his hand sustains 
his claim. The resolutions as passed vary from this origi- 
nal, not in substance, but in order of arrangement. The 
variation has given rise to a claim of authorship for Breck- 
enridge, which it is doubtful he ever made. Scarcely less 
devoted to the cause set forth in the resolutions than Brcck- 
enridge and Nicholas was a young Virginian, lately come 
into Kentucky from the law office of Chancellor Wythe — 
Henry Clay, who, in a powerful speech at Lexington, 
denounced the unpopular Federalist acts, and began a 
political career lasting more than fifty years. 

In the Virginia legislature, on the 13th of December, 
similar resolutions were presented by John Taylor, and 
adopted eleven days later. They were originally written 
by Madison, had been handed about the state in slightly 
varying forms, had been adopted at nearly every court- 
house, and had been sent up to the legislature. The 
Kentucky and the Virginia resolutions, written the one by 
Jefferson, the other by Madison, were not construed until 



1776-1S60] THE VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS 411 

a later time as differing, or as intended to differ, in mean- 
ing. Each was intended to identify the opponents of the 
Federalists as the state party, and further, to define the 
state, and the character of the federal government. The 
definitions were destined to affect American politics for a 
hundred years. 

Every state constitution at this time declared, expressly 
or by implication, that the state was a body politic — a social 
compact — formed by a voluntary association of individuals. 
The Virginia resolutions applied this familiar idea to the 
federal government ; it was a compact formed by the volun- 
tary association of the states. It was limited by the plain 
sense of the instrument of union — the Constitution. But 
of late the federal government had manifested a spirit "to 
consolidate the states by degrees into one sovereignty, the 
obvious tendency and inevitable consequence of which 
would be to transform the republican system of the United 
States into an absolute or at best a mixed monarchy." 
The same idea was expressed in the Kentucky resolutions 
of 1798, but was carried further in those of the following 
year. The states that formed the Constitution, being 
sovereign and independent, had the unquestionable right 
to judge of infraction, and "a nullification by these sover- 
eignties of all unauthorized acts done under color of that 
instrument is the rightful remedy." Thus the issue was 
made: State Sovereignty vs. National Sovereignty. 

A century has passed since the Virginia and Kentucky 
resolutions raised this fundamental question. If the ques- 
tion were asked. Where dici the doctrine of state sovereignty 
originate, and where was it put forth as the law of the land? 
perhaps most of the answers would declare that it originated 
in the former slave-holding states, and might be found at 
one time in their laws and constitutions. The answer is 
incorrect. 

The colonies were independent of each other, but were 
an integral part of the empire. When they became states, 
the Declaration of Independence described them as free and 
independent, but not as sovereign. The commonwealths 
have adopted one hundred and twelve constitutions: the 
fifteen southern states, fifty-five, not one of which has 



41:: STATE SOVEREIGNTY [1770-1800 

described the state as sovereign ; the thirty northern states, 
fifty-seven, five of which have described the state not only 
as free and independent, but as sovereij^n. Connecticut 
was the first to use the word ** sovereign. '" in the act of the 
general court of 1776 — in substance a bill of rights — con- 
tinuing the charter as the civil government of the state. 
The word does not occur in the Constitution of 18 18. The 
Articles of Confederation, approved by the states in 17S1, 
declared that each retained its sovereignty, and even,- power 
not expressly delegated to the United States — almost a 
quotation from the constitution of Massachusetts adopted 
the year before. This constitution is still in force. In its 
constitution of 17S4. and again in 1792, New Hampshire 
made the same claim, and did not abandon it till 1S76. In 
the treaty of peace of 17S3 the king treated with the several 
states as free, sovereign, and independent. The word does 
not occur in the Constitution, but the idea, as the debates 
show, was discussed at length. Elbridge Gerr\- declared 
that the states never had been independent, and on the 
principles of the confederation never could be. but was 
immediately answered by Luther Martin that "the language 
of the states being sovereign and independent was once 
familiar and understood, though it seemed suddenly to have 
become strange and obscure." The rejected New Jersey 
plan based the government of the Union on the states as 
sovereign. Doubtless the convention purposely left the 
definition of sovereignty to be made by administration. 
But that a compromise was made is suggested in the sixty- 
seond number of the /■V</<r<.'/;>/. of which Hamilton was 
probably the author: "The equal vote in each state is at 
once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sover- 
eignty remaining in the individu;U states and an instrument 
for preserving that residuarA- sovereignty." This, it will 
be remembered, was written in 17SS. However unphilo- 
sophical the notion of "'residuary- sovereignty." it was 
destined for many years to return, not to pl.igue the invent- 
ors, but those for whom it was invented. Five years before 
Jefferson wrote his definition of parties, the Supreme Court 
had ruled that Georgia was not a sovereign state, that the 
nation alone was sovereign, and that a state could be sued 



i77t-i-'=ooj THI-: DOCIKINE ESTABLISHED 413 

like an iiidividiuU. The decision was given by Justice 
Wilson, unquestionably the ablest constitutional lawyer in 
the convention that made the Constitution, and was 
strengthened by a similar opinion by Chief Justice Jay. In 
a powerful dissenting opinion. Justice Iredell, basing his 
reasons on the common law. declared the states to be as 
sovereign within their sphere as was the United States 
within its own. His opinion was accepted by Georgia as 
the constitutional one. and was welcomed by the Repub- 
licans as the foundation for their political creed. On the 
day following the decision. Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, 
in the House, moved a resolution, preliminary- to an amend- 
ment to the Constitution, to protect the sovereign states 
from suits brought by individuals. Congress took no im- 
mediate action, but the spirit of his resolution quickly- 
overspread the country-, quickened the party which Jeffer- 
son was organizing, and culminated in the Eleventh Amend- 
ment, the adoption of which was announced to Congress bv 
President Adams just thirty-four days before Jeflferson 
wrote to Wise on the state of political parties. 

The doctrine of state sovereignity thus got constitutional 
standing. The party by whose influence the amendment 
had been carried through, by the elections in i8cx)was put 
in possession of the government. It reversed the majority 
in the Senate and gained twenty-three members in the 
House, giving it a majority of eighteen. On the twentv- 
sixth ballot the House chose Jefferson President. Thus, 
curiously, the author of the Kentucla- resolutions, who first 
made the doctrine of state sovereignty a principle in the 
creed of a great party, was chosen to the presidency by the 
representatives of the people voting as states. For sixty 
years the party which he had organized was to follow an 
unprecedented career. During that time thirty Congresses 
assembled and thirteen ""greatly distinguished citizens.'" as 
Lincoln described them in his first inaugural, administered 
the government. That party was to elect ten of these 
Presidents, and to control both the Senate and the House 
in twenty-three of these Congresses. In five others it was 
to control the Senate. In one Congress only was it to be 
in the minoritv in both branches: for two vears from tlie 



414 STATE SOVEREIGNTY [1776-1860 

inauguration of William Henry Harrison the Whigs were 
to have a majority in both Houses, but — John Tyler was 
President. 

Had Jefferson's wishes been carried out, the Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions would have become an amend- 
ment to the Constitution. With his party firmly in control 
of the government, this was unnecessary. The doctrines 
of 1798 were a perennial theme for discussion — in state 
constitutional conventions, in Congress, and in the political 
literature of the country. They came gradually to be con- 
strued as the warrant for administrative measures, and by 
a political school as the implied interpretation of the 
supreme law. Economic events greatly affected this school, 
and ultimately divided it. The first tariff act expired in 
1796, having been in force nearly seven years. It was not 
listed among the acts specially odious to the party which 
Jefferson was then organizing. But the act of 1 8 16 com- 
bined the principles of revenue and protection, and from 
the April day when Monroe signed it the idea of state 
sovereignty underwent a change. Thirty years before, 
Hamilton had declared that the national government would 
never be supreme until it should turn all the principles and 
passions of men to its support. From the passage of the 
tariff of 1 8 16, the national government gradually became 
identified with the personal fortunes of a manufacturing 
class. The doctrines of 1798 were from this time made to 
include the doctrine of free trade. The old parties divided 
on new lines, and the first industrial struggle between them 
began. The country, hitherto agricultural, now divitled 
into manufacturing states and agricultural states: into the 
northern with free labor, and the southern with slave. 
There were tariff men in the South and Southwest, but the 
majority there gradually combined into a party favoring 
free trade, state sovereignty, and slavery extension. The 
first struggle between the radical wing of this party and the 
national government culminated in the effort of South 
Carolina to nullify the tariff laws in 1833, ^^^ to administer 
the doctrines of the Kentucky resolutions of 1799. On the 
1 6th of March of that year, Augustus Fitch, one of Jack- 
son's innumerable political scouts, wrote to the President 



1776-1860] SOUTH CAROLINA, DRED SCOTT 415 

an account of what he saw in the Cokimbia convention 
when it rescinded the ordinance of nullification. The chief 
obstacle to rescinding was that "Mr. Clay's bill did not 
fully abandon the principle of protection." Across the 
face of this unpublished letter Jackson wrote: "The Ordi- 
nance & all laws under it repealed — so ends the wicked & 
disgraceful conduct of Calhoun McDuffie & their co-nullies. 
They will only be remembered, to be held up to scorn, by 
every one who loves freedom, our glorious constitution & 
government of laws." 

But the doctrines of 1798 survived. Pierce and King 
were elected in 1852 on a platform which incorporated the 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. The party electing 
them declared that the doctrines of 1798 constituted one 
of the main foundations of its political creed, and that it 
was resolved to carry them out in their obvious meaning 
and import. On this issue the party elected a majority in 
both branches of Congress, received a majority of the popu- 
lar vote, and chose more than five-sixths of the electoral 
college. Four years later it incorporated the same plank 
in its platform, continued its control of Congress, and 
elected Buchanan and Breckenridge; but their popular vote 
was only a plurality, and they received only five-ninths of 
the electoral vote. Two days after the inauguration the 
decision in the Dred Scott case, long anxiously awaited, 
was handed down. The chief justice declared that the 
United States did not possess all the powers which usually 
belong to the sovereignty of a nation. The states had 
surrenderd only a portion of their sovereignty. The ordi- 
nance of 1787 violated their sovereign rights. As in the 
case of Georgia in 1794, so in that of Dred Scott, the 
state alone had final jurisdiction. The doctrines of 1798 
had again triumphed. 

In October following, the Lecompton convention applied 
the decision in the first constitution proposed for Kansas, 
in which the state was described as free, sovereign, and 
independent — the last instance of the use of the word in an 
American constitution. The election of Buchanan and the 
Dred Scott decision proved that the doctrines of 1798 were 
still held in high favor, and also that the sentiment of the 



4i6 STATE SOVEREIGNTY [17761860 

country was rapidly changing. The nature of the change 
is suggested in an appeal to the people of the United States 
which emanated from the leaders of a new party opposed 
to slavery extension. It appeared in January, 1854, and 
was signed, among others, by Sumner, Chase, and Gid- 
dings. It put opposition to slavery extension wholly on 
industrial grounds. If slavery were permitted in Kansas 
and Nebraska, it would restrict immigration, enhance the 
cost of constructing the proposed Pacific railway, and cut 
off the free states of the Atlantic from the free states of the 
Pacific. The development of the central portion of the 
continent would be hopelessly prevented. The economic 
argument was elaborated from this time, till an industrial 
constitutency was thoroughly organized into a new political 
party. As the opposition in 1794 found constitutional 
standing-ground in the dissenting opinion of Justice Iredell, 
so the opposition in 1854 found a constitutional basis for 
their opinions in the dissenting opinion of Justice Curtis in 
the Dred Scott case. 

Congress showed the effect of a changed public senti- 
ment. In the thirty-sixth, the second of Buchanan's 
administration, the new Republican party gained control of 
the House. Two years later the new party gained control 
of both houses and elected Lincoln, displacing that great 
party which, sixty years before, had in like manner driven 
the Federalists from power. The new industrial doctrines 
which had triumphed over the doctrines of 1798 were briefly 
set forth in President Lincoln's first inaugural : "The Union 
is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in 
fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774," Few indeed 
of those who heard him could have told at that moment 
what were the articles to which the President referred. 
Two years older than the Declaration of Independence, 
they declared the industrial independence of the colonies. 
They were a solemn non-importation agreement to encour- 
age "frugality, economy, and industry, and promote agri- 
culture, arts, and the manufactures of this country." The 
nation rested on industry, the nation was sovereign — ideas 
antagonistic to the doctrines of 1798. These ideas were 
now to be tested by civil war. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE STATES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 

1800-1860 

The state constitutions adopted down to the outbreak 
of the Civil War were thirty-two in number, and fell under 
the general law of migration. Those which had been 
adopted west of New England and the middle states 
strongly resembled their originals in these states. The 
older southern states were the parents of constitutions 
adopted west of them. The North and the South had 
become distinct communities, and the constitutions in force 
in the two sections indicated how deeply seated were many 
of the differences between them. At the North the civil 
unit was the township; at the South, the county. State 
government at the North was more or less of the New York 
type; at the South, more or less of the type prevailing in 
Virginia. During the first sixty years of the century, 
population had moved westward to the Pacific, and placed 
the entire public domain under local government. There 
were vast unsettled areas in the territories, and nearly as 
great ones in the states. The unoccupied region lay chiefly 
west of the Mississippi. Migration and immigration had 
carried the distinguishing features of the New York consti- 
tution westward and those of Virginia and Kentucky south- 
westward. The northern and southern streams of population 
first met in California, in 1849, ^^^1 there resulted a com- 
posite commonwealth, the form of whose constitution 
resembled that of New York, but the spirit under which it 
was to be administered was strongly like that of Virginia.* 

The bills of rights had changed but little since 1800, 
though two clauses, one distinctively northern, the other 

*For an account of the California constitution of 1849-1850, see my 
Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chap- 
ters X-XII. 

417 



4i8 STATES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR [1800-1860 

distinctively southern, characterized the times. The anti- 
slavery provision of the ordinance of 1787 was adopted in 
all the constitutions of the Northwest, but at the South, 
the right of property in man was afifirmed with equal insist- 
ence. There the term "property," since the treaty of 
1803, which gave us the Louisiana country, had come to 
include the distinguishing institution of the South. But 
if we were to depend upon the text of a state constitution 
for our knowledge of slavery, we would not gain much 
information. That knowledge must be obtained from the 
black code. Between the constitutions made during these 
sixty years and those first adopted by the states there were 
many marked contrasts. Most noticeable was the disap- 
pearance of religious and property qualifications for the 
voter. These were more or less common down to Andrew 
Jackson's administration, at which time the Democratic 
party became firmly seated in power and was instrumental 
in abolishing them. Nor was this the Hmit of reform. 
The period of residence required of voters was cut down, 
so that in most states it was not more than a year, and in 
many only six months. States which hesitated to abolish 
the property qualification usually substituted a tax in some 
form. 

But the liberal policy of the Democrats did not include 
the extension of suffrage to free persons of color. Quite 
without exception the attitude of the North toward this 
class of the population became more and more hostile.* 
At the opening of the century they were entitled to vote 
by the constitutions of seven states. f But with the excep- 
tion of three New England states, the right was taken from 
them by 1838, though New York, in 1821, allowed them 
to vote, if possessed of realty of the value of two hundred 
and fifty dollars, clear of incumbrance, and a resident of 
the state for three years. 

The word "white" described the American elector dur- 
ing all these years. Government was distinctively the white 

* For an account of this hostility, see my Constitutional History of 
the American People, 1776- 1850, Vol. I, Chapter XII. 

■j-New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
vania, North Carolina, Tennessee. 



i8oo-i86o] THE LEGISLATURES 419 

man's. Few provisions were to be found in the constitu- 
tions disqualifying the voter. The chief of these were 
aimed against dueling and bribery. The Whigs never 
attempted to revive the discriminating electoral qualifica- 
tions for which the old Federalist party had stood. De- 
mocracy would not longer tolerate such limitations. Even 
the property qualifications for ofifice-holders were soon swept 
away, though they lingered in the South for members of 
the House, and for a short time in Louisiana and Missis- 
sippi for the governor. The states were about equally 
divided between one and two years in their provisions for 
the term of representatives; with few exceptions, they 
admitted a man to candidacy for the House when he arrived 
at the age of twenty-one. 

The qualifications for senators were more exacting. 
The representative must have been a citizen of the state 
at least a year, and in some states two years; in the newer 
states he must be a citizen of the United States. For a 
senator a longer residence was required. He could not 
become a candidate, save in Michigan and Wisconsin, until 
he was at least twenty-five years of age, but he was elected, 
save in New England, for a term usually twice as long. 
A significant change in the powers of the two houses was 
the right of the senate to originate money bills, an inno- 
vation inaugurated by Tennessee.* Many devices were 
tried to secure an equitable representation. The states 
were divided into senatorial and representative districts. 
The membership of the house was sometimes fixed by the 
constitution, but no method that was tried gave entire 
satisfaction. In 1850, Michigan introduced the single dis- 
trict system, which it was hoped would solve the problem. 

The distinguishing changes from the eighteenth-century 
constitutions were twofold as affecting legislation; first, 
the gradual adoption of a mass of constitutional provisions 
forbidding special legislation, and secondly, though less 
numerous, the provisions declaring what legislation was 
obligatory. Hostility to special legislation grew out of the 
bitter experience of the country with legislatures which 
had permitted lotteries, wildcat banks, and monopolies, and 



420 STATES HEl-'ORb: THE CIVIL WAR [1800-1860 

wiifch had pluiit^cd tlie states deeply into debt. These 
restrictions began in 1803, in Ohio, and continued in ever- 
increasing numbers throughout the period. The obh'ga- 
tions imposed upon the legislatures were few. In the newer 
states at the North the most noticeable obligations were to 
establish and maintain schools, and to create a sinking fund 
wherewith to meet the state debt. One notorious obliga- 
tion precipitated the great controversy of 1820; the obli- 
gation of the Missouri legislature to exclude free negroes 
from the state;* but a similar exclusion made in later years 
by the laws of nine statesf provoked no public excitement, 
for opinion North and South was made up against them. 
All the states North and South excluded them from the 
militia. 

The distinctive change in the attitude of the people 
toward their state governments was shown in the gradual 
distrust of the wisdom and probity of public ofificials. 
Provisions against special legislation were the immediate 
result of this distrust. Even more noticeable was the 
change in the powers and position of the governors as com- 
pared with those established by the eighteenth-century 
constitutions. The old property qualifications were swept 
away, but their si)irit was retained in the term of residence 
exacted of gubernatorial candidates. For them the require- 
ment of United States citizenship for from ten to twenty 
years, and of state citizenship from three to seven, were not 
uncommon. In the southern states there was a tendency 
to native Americanism, ;{; especially in their constitutions. 
But the triumph of democracy was nowhere more evident 
than in the choice of governor. Instead of the indirect 
choice by the house and senate, the method now was by 
popular vote, for one year in New England, but in other 
parts of the country for from two to four years. The 
people had learned the value of a good governor. They 
increased his powers and also his salary, but in many states 

* See pp. 347-8, ante. 

f IlliiK)is, Maryland, Indiana, Soiitli Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri. For the dates of these acts, see 
my Constitutional History t)f tlic American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, 362. 

J See my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, 
Vol. I, Chapters XHI-XW 



i8oo-i86o] THE COURTS 421 

made him ineligible for a second term until a period of 
time, usually three or four years, had intervened. 

One great cause of the increase of the governor's author- 
ity was the founding of many charitable institutions, such 
as insane asylums and schools for the deaf, dumb, and 
blind, and the criminal classes. The public soon discovered 
that these institutions were a sore temptation to legislators, 
and they removed them from their care, placing them 
directly in the hands of the governor, or of commissioners. 
But not as yet did the governors use their veto power as 
boldly as have their successors in later years. It would 
seem that the executives were not yet quite at home in the 
judicial dominion which the constitutions were creating for 
them. The period was distinctively one of a larger popular 
confidence in the executive and a corresponding decrease 
of faith in legislatures. 

Of the courts it is difficult to speak accurately and not 
exhaustively. In each of the thirty-two constitutional con- 
ventions of the period much was said of judicial reform. 
The Democratic party favored an elective judiciary, and as 
early as Jackson's time began a campaign to introduce it. 
They were more successful in the West than in the East. 
The older states were conservative in their judicial reforms, 
while the western were somewhat radical. The supporters 
of the elective system were found in every convention, and 
their argument was the common one of the superior ability 
of all the people to choose a suitable judge as compared 
with that of the governor,* an argument often lost upon a 
body of delegates, the majority of whom were attorneys. 
The lawyers showed little disposition to take up the elective 
judicial system. But all through the period, there was a 
marked change in the organization of the lower courts. 
Their number multiplied, their jurisdiction was somewhat 
carefully defined, and a system of resident judges was 
gradually introduced. In the East, appointment to the 
bench meant usually a life position ; in the West, it rarely 
signified a service of more than one term. The people 
complained of over-legislation, and the courts groaned 

* For a typical discussion, Kentucky, 1849, ^^^ "ly Constitutional 
History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chapter II. 



422 STATES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR [1800-1860 

under the increasing mass of litigation. The eastern judges 
had access to fairly complete law libraries, but too fre- 
quently a western judge was obliged to depend upon his 
instincts and the traditions of the common law. Gradu- 
ally, after 1835, the minor judicial positions, such as jus- 
tice of the peace and magistrates, became elective, 
especially in the newer states. Thus the change which was 
ultimately to distinguish the American state judiciary was 
inaugurated at the bottom. 

Looking through the laws and constitutions of the 
period, it soon becomes evident that no subject interested 
the public more deeply than corporations. Hostility to 
them is apparent on every side. By a corporation was 
usually understood a bank or an institution which used bills 
of credit and made exchanges. In 1816, Indiana inaugu- 
rated what it considered a reform, the monopoly of the 
banking business in the hands of the state. There should 
be a great central bank with a branch for every three coun- 
ties. Alabama took up the scheme three years later, but 
increased the capital from thirty thousand to one hundred 
thousand dollars in bullion; that is, it was supposed to be 
in bullion. In the following year Missouri forbade its legis- 
lature to incorporate more than one banking company, 
limited to five branches, but the capital stock might be five 
millions. Biddle's bank in Philadelphia, with its enormous 
capital of thirty-five millions and the equally enormous 
profits which the public imagined it had made, was the 
ideal before the states. 

The wild speculation in western lands, which reached 
its climax in 1837, went hand in hand with equally wild 
banking schemes. Legislatures lost their wits in organizing 
land companies and banking corporations, and the people 
scarcely learned wisdom by the terrible lessons of the panic 
of 1837; yet what they learned they speedily incorporated 
in the constitutions, which, after 1840, attempted to pre- 
vent such a calamity again.* The climax of this effort to 
be honest was reached in New York in 1846, when the con- 
vention introduced a definition of a corporation into the 

*The effect of this lesson is shown in tlie enabling act for Oregon, 
August 14, 1848, and in the constitution ol the state, February 14, 1859. 



i8oo-i86o] BANKING 423 

new constitution, and inaugurated a sound banking policy. 
The clause was speedily copied in the West. Samuel J. 
Tilden, who was a member of this celebrated New York 
convention, related, in after years, that when the fiscal pro- 
vision was proposed, it did not attract much attention. 
Neither was it seriously debated, nor any reason given for 
its adoption, but it was found at last that it had been incor- 
porated in the constitution, though its authorship could 
not be traced, and, he slyly observed, it was later adopted 
by seven western states for the same reason. But the New 
York convention had inaugurated the reform of making 
stockholders in any banking corporation individually^ re- 
sponsible, to the extent of their shares, for its debts and 
liabilities. The western states, especially Iowa, improved 
on the New York provision and surrounded the depositors 
with more ample security. 

After 1848, the value of a sinking fund was emphasized, 
and the states began to require their legislatures to set apart 
annually a fixed portion of the public income which should 
be invested in state or federal bonds as a means of paying 
the public debt. It was in 1850 that Michigan* perfected 
another reform, begun by Indiana in 18 19, the co-ordina- 
tion of the educational opportunities of the state, and prac- 
tically established a great system of education, beginning 
in the primary school and ending at the university. The 
remarkable characteristic of the system was the source of 
its support — public taxation. 

The state constitutions made slight reference to the 
general government. Maine, in 1820, was the first state 
to acknowledge in its constitution the paramount authority 
of the national Constitution, but in this respect it was not 
a type of the constitutions of the country. On the other 
hand, the constitutions were almost equally free from any 
claim to state sovereignty. The term "sovereignty" was 
not found in any southern constitution, and was only a 
survival in the constitutions of Massachusetts and New 
Hampshire. The effort to insert it in the constitution of 

* For an account of the Michigan constitution of 1850, see my Con- 
stitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chapters 
VIJ-IX. 



424 statp:s before the civil war [1800 i860 

Kansas, in 1857, failed. All the constitutions were con- 
spicuously silent as to local and municipal government. 
Michigan, in 1850, introduced an article on county and 
township government, almost the first of its kind, but 
municipal interests were scarcely hinted at. The reason is 
obvious. The cities of the country were small, few were 
chartered, and all that were chartered derived their special 
privileges from acts of the legislature. The franchises 
which distinguish the modern city, and which have been 
utilized with such profit by private corporations, were not 
yet dreamed of. 

Like the constitutions of the eighteenth century, those 
of the first sixty years of the nineteenth were made by a 
few men, who usually were of great eminence. Among the 
members of the conventions which assembled from 1800 to 
i860 were Chief Justice Marshall, John Adams, Madison, 
Monroe, Aaron Burr, Daniel B. Tompkins, William R. 
King, Martin Van Burcn, Daniel Webster Joseph Story, 
Alexander II. Stephens, Charles O'Conor, Horace Greeley, 
John M. Clayton, Thomas A. Hendricks, and Schuyler 
Colfax. In the aggregate, the men who framed the state 
constitutions from 1800 to i860 numbered about eighteen 
hundred, and like their predecessors in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, represented the various interests in the country. 
Nearly all were native Americans. Thus these constitu- 
tions were distinctively American. No person of the 
African race was a member of any of them, and in none, 
excepting those which assembled after 1840, were the 
privileges of free persons of color discussed in any way. 

Surveying the constitutions which were in force in i860, 
it is easy to detect the line of dcmarkation which divided 
them, coinciding as it did with the line of the Missouri 
Compromise. North of that line a distinguishing provision 
was the declaration frequently to be found declaring the 
right of education ; south of that line the claim of the right 
of property in man was the principal characteristic. The 
principles embodied in these constitutions were set forth by 
the courts from time to time. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

MEN AND MANNERS BEFORE THE WAR 

1830-1860 

The country over which Abraham Lincohi was chosen 
chief magistrate had an area of more than three millions of 
square miles (3,025,000), and a population of more than 
thirty-one millions (31,443,321), living in thirty-three states 
and two territories. During the new President's lifetime 
sixteen states had been added to the Union. The repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, 1854, and the Dred Scott 
decision, in 1857, had erased the old political line of 36° 
30' which so -long divided free soil from slave, but there 
was as yet no slave state north of that line, and the fate of 
slavery in Kansas and Nebraska was uncertain. 

One free state, California, ran far below the line. The 
country was divided, therefore, practically as before, into 
free soil and slave soil; and the people, into slave-holding 
and non-slave-holding. If, by law, slavery might exist 
wherever the people wished to have it, the law was bound to 
depend upon the will of the people. Over twenty millions 
of these (20,309,960) inhabited* free soil; over eleven millions 
(i 1, 133,361) lived on slave soil. Thus it was said that there 
were two men in the North to every one in the South. 

The change in the rank of the states, since 1830, in 
wealth, population, and representation, was shown by the 
census: 

Rank in 1830: Rank in i860: 

New York, New York, 

Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 

Virginia, Ohio, 

Ohio, - Illint)is, 

North Carolina, Virginia, 

Kentucky, Indiana, 

Tennessee, ~ Massachusetts, 

Massachusetts, Missouri, 

South Carolina, Kentucky, 

Georgia. Tennessee. 

42s 



426 MEN AND MANNERS [1830-1860 

The fifteen slave-holdiiij^ states, in i860, had only two 
hundred and ninety-six thousand more people than the 
four free states, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illi- 
nois. Since 1830, the great increase in population had 
scarcely affected the states south of Mason and Dixon's 
line; these, relatively, had fallen behind in population, and 
chiefly for two reasons: a constant migration from these 
south Atlantic states into the West and Southwest, and 
the exclusion of foreign immigrants from these states by 
the presence of slavery and "native Americanism." 

The old states of the North were also constantly drained 
by migration west, but they were also constantly supplied 
by an increasing stream of immigrants from Europe. 
From 1850 to i860, Wisconsin gained over 470,000 people; 
Michigan over 650,000, and many of these came from New 
England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. During 
the same time Arkansas gained 226,000, Texas 392,000, 
and most of these came from the states directly east. The 
period from 1830 to i860 was one of great migration. 
It may safely be estimated that more than ten million 
people went West during that time. 

During this period nearly five million European immi- 
grants arrived in our country. In order of numbers, they 
were: Irishmen, Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and 
Canadians. But many countries were represented. The 
Irish settled in the eastern cities and towns, were highly 
industrious, and willingly built the canals and railroads so 
extensively put through during these thirty years. The 
Germans and the English took up land, especially in New 
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The 
French found employment in the cities. The Swiss and the 
Scandinavians became farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and 
Michigan. The Canadians became lumbermen, manufac- 
turers, and farmers, and chiefly along the northern border. 

There was no pauper immigration. Cheap lands in 
America, wars in Europe, cheap and fairly comfortable 
transportation, and the love of liberty and personal better- 
ment brought these millions to our shores. Only a few went 
into the slave-holding states. Immigrants had to work for 
a living. Labor was wanted in the rapidly developing North 



1830-1860] CHICAGO 427 

and West. No. slave-holding people have ever made free 
laborers feel welcome, or even encouraged them to come. 
Free labor and slave labor cannot be carried on side by side. 

It will be remembered that we became a manufacturing 
people about 1830, and from that time dates the rapid 
growth of our cities. In 1830, one person in sixteen of our 
population lived in a city of at least eight thousand; in 
i860, one in six lived there. Our city population had 
increased during this time from eight hundred and sixty- 
five thousand to over five million. No better illustration 
of this wonderful change can be given than Chicago. On 
the 4th of August, 1830, Chicago was surveyed, and on the 
27th of September the sale of lots began. A letter writ- 
ten by an engineer at the time from Chicago says: "The 
commissioners of land received upwards of seven thousand 
dollars in cash here for what lots were sold; before said sale 
there was not one freeholder within one hundred miles of 
this place."* In i860, Chicago had a population of one 
hundred and ten thousand, and was the ninth city in size 
in the Union. 

San Francisco had only one house in 1835. Madison, 
Wisconsin, and Davenport, Iowa, were founded in 1836; 
Sacramento, in 1839; Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1840; 
Dubuque, though founded by the French in 1788, was 
incorporated in 1842; Atlanta was laid out in 1845; Indi- 
anapolis was incorporated in 1847; Brooklyn, New York, 
and several contiguous townships were consolidated in 
1855; also Philadelphia and several populous suburbs. 
The names of new towns that have become flourishmg 
cities founded between 1830 and i860 would cover half a 
dozen pages of this history. Chicago outgrew all others. 
This wonderful increase in the number, wealth, population, 
and importance of our cities was due to five great causes: 
Migration and immigration, prosperity in farming, 
cheap lands, prosperity in manufactures, improvements and 
inventions, extension of railroads and canals, and the com- 
forts of city life, its multiplied opportunities of amusement, 
occupation, and the care of the unfortunate. 

* MS. letter, James Herrington to Thomas Forster, Chicago, October 
13, 1830. 



428 MEN AND MANNERS [1830-1860 

During these thirty years, all the l^rge cities were 
greatly improved. They lighted their principal streets with 
sperm-oil lamps, gradually introducing gas, after 1845 ; they 
paved their principal streets with cobblestones. Wooden 
pavements came in about 1856. They organized a police 
force, and a fire department, the old hand-bucket giving 
place to fire-engines drawn about and worked by hand. 
Theaters began to be profitable to their owners, and many 
church buildings were erected, some of which cost as much 
as forty-five thousand dollars. The large cities had one or 
more public hospitals. 

Cities in i860 had what their inhabitants called "rapid 
transit." Omnibuses were first seen in New York in the 
spring of 1831, and the city had its first horse-car line the 
year following. Chicago and Baltimore introduced horse- 
cars in 1859. The 'bus, as our breathless Americans soon 
called the new conveyance, was the typical local public 
conveyance of the period. 

No city improvement of the time was viewed with 
greater pride than "the new water-works." Nashville was 
thus supplied in 1834; New Orleans, from the Mississippi, 
in 1836; Chicago, in 1841; the Croton aqueduct in New 
York was completed in 1842; Boston, in 1848. But pri- 
vate wells were in common use in our large cities in i860. 

Chloroform was discovered in 1831, but its use as an 
an.-esthetic was not clearly recognized until the next year. 
Ether was discovered in 1846, apparently about the same 
time by Dr. Lang, of Georgia, and Dr. Wells, of Connec- 
ticut. It is said to have been known to the earliest chem- 
ists, but not as an anaesthetic. Its use for dulling pain was 
discovered contemporaneously by two American dental 
physicians, Dr. Jackson and Dr. Morton. The mowing 
and reaping machine was invented and patented in 1831 
by Cyrus McCormick. Samuel Colt invented the revolver 
in 1835 ; Charles Goodyear succeeded in making vulcanized 
rubber in 1839, and rubber shoes, boots, combs, hats, and 
knife-handles were among the first "novelties" put on the 
market. Dr. John W. Draper, in 1840, at the New York 
University, succeeded in making the first daguerreotype 
portraits. Until then it was supposed that only still life 



18301860] DISCOVERIES, INVENTIONS 429 

could be taken. Many of the pictures we now have of the 
eminent people of this period are made from daguerreo- 
types taken by Draper's process. 

The electric telegraph was first successfully operated in 
1844. Samuel F. B. Morse had for years been working 
on the invention. The sewing-machine was invented by 
Elias Howe, Jr., in 1846, and a patent was granted to him 
in that year. In 1847, R. Hoe & Co., of New York, put 
in operation the first cylinder printing-press. These arc 
only a few of the inventions and discoveries made during 
these years. Down to 1861, the government of the United 
Status had granted nearly forty-four thousand patents, and 
nearly all of them since 1840. If we were asked to name 
the five great inventions and discoveries of this period, 
doubtless we would agree that they are the mowing and 
reaping machine, the sewing-machine, the telegraph, india- 
rubber, and anaesthetics. 

At first the mower and reaper was heavy, clumsy, and 
very expensive, and was made by hand throughout. The 
inventor failed to get any manufacturer to invest a dollar 
in it, and it was not much in use till 1850. Even then the 
machines were complicated, were heavy, and cost about four 
hundred dollars. But in i860 they had improved; were 
simpler, lighter, and half as costly. The great wheat farms 
of the West were started about this time. The harvester 
made them possible. With it a child could do the work 
of many men. The grain-drill was invented in 1841, but, 
like the reaper, did not come into general use till 1850. 

Like the harvester, the early sewing-machines were 
heavy, complicated, expensive, and hard to run. No 
manufacturer saw anything in Howe's invention, and he 
nearly starved before he got it on the market, but his idea 
was taken up by others and many machines made, some of 
which infringed his patent. The sewing-machine had many 
immediate effects. It made clothing cheaper; it revolution- 
ized the shoe business, and made shoe-factories possible ; it 
gave employment to thousands, and it set women free, and 
enabled them to read, to travel, and to interest themselves 
in public questions. 

Though Morse got his patent in 1837, it was nearly 



430 MEN AND MANNERS [1830-1860 

twenty years before the telegraph was in common use. 
This was because the country, until 1856, was not closely 
connected by business interests and railroads. The tele- 
graph grew up with transportation facilities. Down to 
1856, the telegraph business was conducted by many small 
companies, but in that year most of these were consoli- 
dated into the Western Union. About this time (1854), 
Cyrus W. Field conceived the notion of an Atlantic cable. 
A transatlantic company was formed, and in 1858, after 
two discouraging failures (1857-58), the cable was laid for 
one thousand seven hundred miles, from Newfoundland 
to Ireland. It worked for three weeks, then it parted, and 
nothing was done with it for eight years. 

With few exceptions, all the manufactures carried on in 
the country in 1830 were extended, and the processes im- 
proved during the next thirty years. New ones were 
begun, and among these many were the first of their kind. 
Steam began to displace water power. In 1834 began the 
manufacture of rifled guns, at Boston; of wooden screws, at 
Providence; and of table cutlery, at Greenfield, Massachu- 
setts. Dentistry, which had its first practitioner in this 
country in 1788, had developed so far that in 1835 a fac- 
tory was opened in Philadelphia to furnish dental supplies. 
In the same year, pins were first made by machinery, by 
the Howe Company, of New York. In 1836, the first 
manufacture of wrought-iron tubing began at Philadelphia. 
The first manufacture of machinists' tools in this country 
began at Nashua, New Hampshire. The manufacture of 
brussels carpet by machinery was accomplished in 1845, 
and the price fell nearly one-half in a few years. In 1848, 
the manufacture of gutta-percha began. It made the 
Atlantic cable possible. Four years later, the manufacture 
of galvanized iron was carried on at a profit in Philadelphia. 
The discovery of oil, at Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Col. 
E. L. Drake, in August, 1859, by boring a well seventy- 
one feet deep, was the beginning of a new industry. It 
created almost as great excitement as the discovery of gold 
in California, ten years earlier. 

Passenger traffic gradually left the canals, and they were 
used for freight. Both stationary and locomotive engines 



1830-1860] RAILROADS ^31 

almost entirely changed in construction. Trains were 
moved at thirty-five miles an hour; but by i860, scarcely 
a vestige of the railroad equipment used in 1833 was to be 
seen. Railroads did not pay, and largely because of the 
expense in keeping up the equipment. The chief sources of 
railroad wealth were the vast land-grants which began to be 
made by the government to railroad companies. Wood 
was used for fuel, and the speed of trains rarely averaged 
twenty miles an hour. 

In 1832, a person could go by rail from Philadelphia to 
Harrisburg; from Philadelphia to Trenton, in 1834. In 
1837, from Richmond to Fredericksburg. From Providence 
to Stonington, from Detroit to Ypsilanti, from Nashua to 
Lowell, in 1838; from Worcester to Springfield, from 
Syracuse to Utica and Auburn, in 1839; from Wilmington 
to Roanoke, North Carolina, in 1840; from Boston to 
Albany, in 1841 ; from Albany to Buffalo, in 1842; from 
Augusta to Atlanta, Georgia, Savannah and Macon, and 
from Boston to Berwick, Maine, in 1843; from Galena to 
Elgin, Illinois, in 1 850. In 1 85 i , the Hudson River railroad 
and the New York and Erie opened, the latter at Dunkirk, 
with imposing ceremonies. President Fillmore, Webster, 
and other members of the Cabinet were present. The 
Michigan Southern and the Michigan Central were com- 
pleted, and the Chicago and Rock Island roads opened 
from Chicago to Joliet, in 1852. In 1853, the New York 
Central Railroad Company was formed by consolidating 
various roads from New York to Buffalo; the Chicago and 
North- Western (Galena and Chicago) was completed to 
Freeport; the Baltimore and Ohio was opened. In 
1854, the Great Western railroad, of Canada from Detroit 
to Niagara Falls, the Chicago and Rock Island to the Mis- 
sissii)pi, and the Illinois Central were quite completed. 
This year also witnessed the construction of the first bridge 
across the Niagara River. 

In 1856, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy was 
finished as far as the Mississippi; the Chicago and Fort 
Wayne and the Penobscot and Kennebec roads were 
completed. These were followed in 1857 by the Chicago 
and St. Louis, the Memphis and Charleston, the Baltimore 



432 MEN AND MANNERS [1830-1860 

and St. Louis, and the Virginia Central. Two years later, 
by consolidation, the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago 
was formed, connecting Pittsburg and Chicago. Thus by 
i860 a passenger could go to Chicago by rail from Boston 
(by two routes from Buffalo); from New York, by the New 
York Central or Erie roads; from Philadelphia, from Pitts- 
burg, and from Baltimore. Nearly all the principal towns 
in the East were on a railroad, though not always on a 
"trunk line." Through tickets and through checks were 
not yet known. But people thought little of changing cars 
and rechecking baggage frequently. After 1855, sleeping- 
cars were attached to one of the night trains, but they were 
considered a great luxury by most people. Railroad bridges 
were of wood; the roadbeds were mostly new; accidents 
were more frequent than to-day. It would now be quite 
difficult to find a vestige of the rolling-stock or equipment 
in use in i860. 

It is to be noticed that the "trunk lines" were formed 
by the union of many short, separate roads. 

In 1839, the express business began. W. F. Harnden, 
of Boston, announced that he would carry packages and 
valuables to and from Boston and New York, by the Ston- 
ington route. He entered into agreement with various 
railroad and steamboat lines to carry the property. Six 
years later, the firm of Wells & Company established an 
express business west of Buffalo. Various rival companies 
were organized. Alvan Adams went into the business in 
1840. By i860, there was an express service between all the 
principal towns of the country. The business was not yet 
consolidated. 

In 1819, the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic, 
the Savannah, built in New York, sailed from the city of 
Savannah, and arrived at Liverpool on the 26th of May, 
after a voyage of twenty-five days. The fuel gave out in 
eleven days, and the remainder of the voyage was made 
under sail. It was decided that no boat could carry fuel 
enough to last the entire voyage. Eighteen years passed : 
the Great Western and the Sirius, side-wheel steamers, 
propelled by steam only, crossed from Liverpool to New 
York. They demonstrated that the ocean could be crossed 



1830-1860] SCHOOLS 433 

by steamships in less than half the time usually required by 
sailing vessels. With the aid of the British government, 
the Cunard Line was begun in 1839; with the aid of Con- 
gress, the Collins Line started in 1850. The average time 
for the voyage was more than twice the length it is now. 
By the time the Atlantic "liners" were running between 
Liverpool and New York, more than nine thousand miles 
of railroad were in operation in the United States. Immi- 
grants usually came on sailing vessels, on account of their 
cheapness. Arriving in Boston, New York, or Philadel- 
phia, they easily found their destination by rail. 

Nearly all the states established free public-school sys- 
tems between 1840 and 1850. This meant a great change 
in the efificiency of the schools. But the graded system of 
instruction was carried out only in the large cities. In a 
country school there were sometimes more classes than 
scholars. The course rarely included more than reading, 
writing, spelling, "practical" arithmetic, geography, and 
English grammar. Our best high schools now offer a more 
extensive course than most of the colleges offered down to 
i860. But many of the boys who went to college then 
became able, if not distinguished, scholars. Some of them 
were the great teachers, writers, lawyers, judges, and jour- 
nalists of the close of the century. The new states made 
much of school lands. Some of the money distributed to 
the states in 1836 became a state school fund, as in New 
York and Kentucky. 

During these thirty years, a large number of newspapers 
and a few magazines flourished for a season, and some were 
established which were destined to long life and great influ- 
ence. Among these were The Louisville Journal, Ken- 
tucky, 183 1 ; The Nezv York Sun, 1833, the first penny 
paper in the country that paid ; The Nezv York Journal of 
Commerce, in the same year, the first paper to get out an 
early edition of Washington news ; The New York Herald, 
in 1835, the first paper to report the money market; The 
New York Express and The Philadelphia Public Ledger, in 
1836; The Baltimore Sun and The Nezv Orleans Picayune, 
in 1837; The Nezv York Tribune, founded by Horace 
Greeley, in 1841; The Chicago Evening Journal, 1844; The 



434 MEN AND MANNERS [1830-1860 

Chicago Tribune, 1847; The New York Times, 1851. Thus 
the period was the birthday of the modern newspaper. 

The newspaper as it is to-day dates from the time 
when railroads made possible a paying subscription list, and 
easy transportation of goods led city merchants to advertise 
freely. Most of the great papers started as strict party 
organs. The New York Tribu?ie grew out of The Log Cabin, 
a Whig paper that Greeley published during the campaign 
of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Harper's Weekly began 
in 1857. Of the magazines now published, Harper's was 
established in 1850; The Atlantic, in 1857, and The North 
American Review in 1815. A glance at the early and at 
the last volumes of Harper's will show how much the arts 
of engraving and illustrating have improved in half a cen- 
tury. 

These thirty years produced many writers and books. 
George Bancroft published eight volumes of his History of 
the United States; William Cullen Bryant, several volumes 
of his poems; James Fenimore Cooper, eighteen of his 
novels, among them The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer, The 
Redskins, and his valuable History of the United States 
Navy (1839); George William Curtis, Nile Notes of a 
Howadji, 185 I ; The Potiphar Papers, 1853, and Prue and 
I, in 1856; John Greenleaf Whittier, his first book, Legends 
of New England, in 1831, to which he added fifteen others 
by i860. His Voices of Freedom, 1849, was excluded 
from the southern mails. 

Bayard Taylor wrote twelve volumes of travels and 
poems. His Views Afoot was the first popular American 
book describing a short visit to Europe. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared in 1852; Dred, in 
1856, and The Minister's Wooing in 1859. William Gil- 
more Simms sent forth forty-one volumes, of which four 
were poems, four biographies, (John Smith, Francis Marion, 
Chevalier Bayard, General Nathaniel Greene), and twenty- 
nine were novels. Prescott wrote all of his works during 
these years: Ferdinand and Isabella, 1837; Conquest of 
Mexico, 1843; Conquest of Peru, 1847, and the Reign 
of Philip n., 1858. 

Francis Parkman's California and Oregon Trail was 



1 830-1860] . BOOKS, AUTHORS 435 

published in 1849, ^"^ the first of his histories of the 
French in America, the History of the Conspiracy of 
Pontiac, in 1851. 

John Lathrop Motley wrote his Rise of the Dutch 
Republic in 1856; Donald G. Mitchell, his Reveries of a 
Bachelor, 1850, and Dream Life, 185 1. From James 
Russell Lowell came the first of The Biglow Papers, A 
Fable for Critics, and The Vision of Sir Launfal, all in 1848. 
Longfellow published sixteen volumes, among them Voices 
of the Night, 1839; Evangeline, 1847; Hiawatha, 1855, 
and The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858; and Holmes 
eight volumes, among them poems, 1836, 1846, 1849, 1850; 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858, and the Pro- 
fessor at the Breakfast Table, i860. J. G. Holland wrote 
The Bay Path, 1857, and Bitter-Sweet, 1858. Richard 
Hildreth completed his history of the United States (from 
1492 to 1820), in six volumes, in 1852. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne gave to the world a series of un- 
equaled tales: The Scarlet Letter, 1850; The House of 
the Seven Gables, 1851; The Blithedale Romance, 1852, 
and his Twice-Told Tales, 1837, 1847, 185 i ; The Marble 
Faun, i860. From Ralph Waldo Emerson came twelve 
volumes, among them. Nature, 1836; Essays, 1841, 1844, 
and Poems, 1847. 

There were many other books, many famous in their 
day, but these are great enough to make an age in liter- 
ature. It might be called the age of Hawthorne, as he died 
in 1864. Looking over this mere catalogue of books and 
writers, one notices that the famous American books were 
written between 1830 and i860. 

Nearly all the distinguished American men and women 
of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century were 
born between 1830 and i860. At the time of the great 
compromise of 1850, when Whigs and Democrats agreed 
that the slavery question was at last "forever settled," 
James G. Blaine and Chester A. Arthur were twenty years 
old; James A. Garfield, nineteen; Benjamin Harrison, 
seventeen; Grover Cleveland, thirteen; Garret A. Hobart, 
six, and William McKinley, seven. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
was fourteen; "Mark Twain" and Phillips Brooks, fifteen; 



436 MEN AND MANNERS • [1830-1860 

George W. Cable, six; Edward Eggleston and \V. D. 
Howells, thirteen; John Fiske and Sidney Lanier, eight; 
R. W. Gilder, six; Bret Harte, eleven; Henry James, Jr., 
seven; Frank R. Stockton, sixteen; Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, seventeen; Moses Coit Tyler, fifteen. And there 
were some famous girls also; among them, Louisa M. 
Alcott, a New England girl of eighteen; Frances H. Bur- 
nett, one year old; Mary Mapes Dodge, twelve; Mary 
Hallock Foote, three; Sarah Orne Jewett and Emma 
Lazarus, one; Celia L. Thaxter, fourteen, and Constance 
Fenimore Woolson, two years of age. The list easily 
lengthens by adding the names of eminent artists, invent- 
ors, travelers, clergymen, physicians, merchants, manufac- 
turers, and men of business who were boys during these 
years. 

The three decades following 1830 were years of ceaseless 
struggle with the slave power, and into the maelstrom which 
the struggle generated the influence of every man in America 
was sooner or later drawn. The question involved found 
no permanent answer, and therefore the age was an age 
of compromise. Excepting Jackson, no President elected 
during these years arose above mediocrity, and Americans 
now, in order to recall the list, must tax their memories or 
consult a book. Compromise breeds mediocrity. 

Tested by the standards of the time, America did not 
lack great men. The familiar triumvirate, Webster, Clay, 
and Calhoun, at once come to mind, and behind them, as 
in a popular picture of the day, are seen Benton and Cass, 
Marcy and Wright, Clayton and Cameron, and entering 
from the distance, Douglas and Seward, Davis, PLamlin, 
and Wilson. 

The men among them of whom the world yet often 
speaks and writes, Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, faced the 
past and labored, in vain, to prolong that past and make it 
forever present. The hopelessness of their task may in the 
end prove how much of their fame will remain; for time 
carries a full account and at last casts up the result. 

These men, who were more like personages in these 
troublous times, lacked the freedom which characterizes the 
large life of the Fathers of the Republic. Webster, Clay, 



1830-1860] THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE 437 

and Calhoun belong to a period rather than to all time, 
but they completely fill that period. 

When Abraham Lincoln, in i860, sought solitude that 
he might write his inaugural address, he asked his friend 
Herndon for a copy of the Constitution, for Webster's 
Reply to Hayne (January 26, 1830), for Jackson's Procla- 
mation against Nullification (December 10, 1832), and for 
Clay's Speech on the Compromise of 1850 (July 22). 
Doubtless these last three efforts outrank all others of the 
kind, which distinguish the times in which they were deliv- 
ered, just as their authors tower above their contemporaries. 

Of less brilliant parts, but of sounder judgment, on 
many questions, and especially on slavery and the extension 
of the republic westward, was their contemporary, Thomas 
Hart Benton, who, in spite of a turgid style and a some- 
what bombastic manner, succeeded in identifying his name 
with things which remain. Jefferson and Benton were our 
statesmen who first realized the necessity of expansion and 
the limitation of slavery. In later years, Benton has been 
rediscovered, like James Wilson, and the large range of his 
intellection is beginning to be understood. He suffered 
from his attorneyship to Jackson, though he won his great 
political case, the expunging resolution. If Martin Van 
Buren's advocacy of the independent treasury system can 
save his name from oblivion, what greater fame must follow 
Benton, who, among our statesmen, was the first to dis- 
cover the importance of Oregon and California to us, and 
whose policy respecting slavery anticipated Lincoln's. 

Benton's name is as imperishably associated with expan- 
sion and the Far West as is Clay's with the history of the 
protective system, or Webster's with the exposition of 
the Constitution. The price which Clay and Webster paid 
as standing candidates for the presidency weakened them as 
statesmen and detracted from their lasting fame. 

Until 1845, adhesive postage-stamps were quite unknown 
in America. They were invented in England in 1841, and 
had been in use there about two years. The I"ree-Soil 
party, in 1848, demanded "free postage for the people." 
In 1845, Congress fixed the postage at five cents on single 
letters for not over three hundred miles, and ten cents for 



438 MEN AND MANNERS [1830 -i860 

a greater distance. In 1847, the law required that adhesive 
stamps, sold by the government, be affixed to mail matter 
before it would be sent through the mails. In 1851, the 
rate was fixed at three cents, if the letter was prepaid ; five 
cents, if not, for any distance less than three thousand 
miles; for a greater distance, the rate was double. 

The Book of Mormon appeared in 1830. Joseph Smith, 
of Palmyra, New York, claimed that he had received it 
from heaven, three years before, as a new Bible for all man- 
kind. He began preaching Mormon doctrines, gathered 
followers who migrated to Kirkland, Ohio, and later to 
Missouri, whence they were driven out by their neighbors, 
and then settled in Illinois, building the city of Nauvoo. 
Here they built a temple and adopted polygamy. But 
their Illinois neighbors disapproved of them, and under the 
guidance of Brigham Young they started across the plains 
for some region so far removed from Gentiles that these 
would never again disturb them. They delayed at Council 
Bluffs, Iowa, for a season, but, intent on isolation, they 
started for Mexico in 1848, and settled at Salt Lake. 
They had scarcely unhitched their horses before the foreign 
soil they had chosen was a part of the United States, by 
treaty with Mexico. They changed the desert about them 
into a garden, and began Utah. 

In 1850, the people of Kentucky adopted a new state 
constitution. During the discussions in the convention, at 
Frankfort, which framed it, the relative resources of the 
free states and the slave states were shown, based on the 
census of 1840. Virginia had eleven million dollars em- 
ployed in manufactures; New England, eight)'-six million 
dollars. The banking capital of Virginia was three million 
five hundred thousand dollars; of New England, sixty-two 
million dollars. The agricultural products of Virginia were 
about two-thirds the value of those of New England. The 
cotton, the sugar, the rice, the tobacco exported from the 
South to foreign countries in one year amounted to seventy- 
five million dollars; the agricultural products of the state 
of New York were yearly worth over one hundred and eight 
million dollars. The South manufactured articles, yearly, 
of the value of forty-two million dollars; the free states 



1830-1860] ALARMING SECTIONALISM 439 

manufactured to the value of over one hundred and ninety- 
seven million dollars. The annual income of New York 
state alone exceeded by more than nine million dollars the 
united earnings of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. 
Essex County, Massachusetts, with a population of less 
than ninety-five thousand, produced as much as the state 
of South Carolina with a population five times as great. 
Ohio had in her primary schools seventeen thousand more 
pupils than had all the primary schools of the South. 
Massachusetts had more than four times as many students in 
her high schools as were to be found in all the high schools 
of the slave states. In the free states, one person in one hun- 
dred and fifty-six could not read or write ; in the slave states, 
one-tenth of tlie free white population of age was illiterate. 
The aggregate earnings of the slave states in one year were 
$403,429,718; of the free states, $658,705,108. 

Long before the election of Lincoln, North and South 
were socially, industrially, and politically apart. The lines 
of migration and of business ran east and west, not north 
and south. Northern people did not go south, nor south- 
ern people north for permanent homes. But people north 
and south went directly west for homes. 

Final proof of threatening sectionalism in the country 
was furnished by the election in i860. Lincoln and Ham- 
lin were both northern men, although Lincoln was a native 
of Kentucky. They received no electoral votes from slave 
soil, and but few popular votes. Douglas and Johnson 
fared little better; they carried New Jersey and one slave 
state, Missouri. Breckenridge and Lane carried every slave 
state except Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 
but not one free state. Eighteen free states supported 
Lincoln; one supported Douglas. Eleven slave states 
supported Breckenridge, and one Douglas. Three slave 
states supported Bell and Everett. So all the slave states 
voted against Lincoln, and all the free states, save one, 
voted for him. 

When the election of Lincoln was known, the legislature 
of South Carolina was in session, and on the 13th of No- 
vember, just a week after the election, it called a state 
convention at Columbia, for the 17th of December. Dele- 



440 MEN AND MANNERS [1S30-1860 

gates were chosen ; the convention met on the 20th, passed 
an ordinance which declared "that the union now subsisting 
between South Carolina and other states, under the name 
of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." 

The convention issued a declaration which concluded 
with the announcement, "that the state of South Carolina 
has resumed her position among the nations of the world." 
South Carolina was followed by Mississippi, Florida, Ala- 
bama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, which before the 
close of January, 1861, passed ordinances of secession. 
The Senators and Representatives of these states in Con- 
gress (with one or two individual exceptions) withdrew. 

At Montgomery, Alabama, on the 4th of February, 1861, 
a convention of delegates from the seceding states assembled, 
adopted a temporary constitution, organized a government 
for one year, with Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, as Presi- 
dent, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, as Vice-Presi- 
dent. The title of the new organization was "The Con- 
federate States of America." All United States property 
in the seven states that could be seized was seized. 

In Charleston Bay were three forts, Sumter, Moultrie, 
and Castle Pinckney, in charge of Major Robert Anderson, 
of the United States army. He had eighty-three officers 
and men under him. He retired to Fort Sumter, Decem- 
ber 26, i860. While the seven states had been seceding 
and seizing national property, President Buchanan had done 
nothing. He said that he had no power under the Consti- 
tution to wage war against a state. Meanwhile, Major 
Anderson was shut up in F^ort Sumter. The South Caro- 
lina troops occupied Castle Pinckney and other commanding 
points, and all the batteries along the shore. Should sup- 
plies be sent to F^ort Sumter? 

Congress and the people of the North said "Yes." 
President Buchanan hesitated. At last public opinion 
forced him to act. The Star of the West, with food and 
reinforcements, was dispatched to Anderson's relief. On 
the 9th of January, the steamer entered Charleston harbor. 
She was fired on from the insurgent batteries and forced to 
return to New York. Buchanan attempted no further 
relief. What would Lincoln do? 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE CIVIL WAR 
1861-1865 

As it became more certain that civil war might break 
out, efforts were made to compromise all differences and to 
prevent war. These efforts were numerous, and emanated 
from private persons, from state legislatures, and from 
members of Congress. 

A peace convention assembled in Washington in Febru- 
ary, 1 86 1, at the suggestion of Virginia; ex- President John 
Tyler, of that state, was chosen its presiding officer.* 
Twenty-one states were represented. John J. Crittenden, 
a Senator from Kentucky, proposed one of the many "reso- 
lutions of Congress" prepared at the time to compromise 
all difficulties. 

A thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was pro- 
posed by Congress as a settlement of all difficulties. The 
amendment, which was offered by Stephen A. Douglas 
early in 1861, was, in substance, that the federal govern- 
ment should never interfere with slavery in the states. 
President Lincoln said, in his inaugural, that he believed 
this was already "implied constitutional law" and that he 
had "no objection to its being made express and invio- 
lable." It was acted on by three states. Its ratification 
by the Illinois convention of 1863 was repudiated later by 
the people of that state. 

The Crittenden resolutions (i860) proposed that slavery 
be abolished north of 36° 30', be protected south of it, and 

♦Among its members were William P. Fessenden, of Maine; George 
S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; David Dudley Field, of New York; 
Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; David Wilmot, of Pennsyl- 
vania; Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland; Thomas Ruffin, of North Caro- 
lina; Robert L. Carruthers, of Tennessee; James Guthrie, of Kentucky; 
Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana; John M. Palmer, 
of Illinois, and James Harlan, of Iowa. 

441 



442 THE CIVIL WAR (1861-1865 

never be interfered with by Congress. The people of a 
territory should be left to make it a free or slave state. 
Congress should never abolish slavery in the District of 
Columbia as long as it existed in Maryland or Virginia; 
nor prohibit interstate slave trade. All fugitive slaves 
rescued should be paid for by the United States. The 
Constitution should never be amended so as to give Con- 
gress power to abolish slavery in a slave state. 

The substance of the resolutions was to deny to Congress 
any control as to slavery anywhere in the Union. The 
Peace convention re-echoed the amendment and the resolu- 
tions. 

But the time for compromise was past. Seven states 
had declared themselves out of the Union; had seized and 
appropriated the property of the United States, and South 
Carolina had fired on the national flag. 

South Carolina issued a "declaration of causes" in justi- 
fication of secession, and an "address" to the people of the 
slave-holding states. These may be accepted as the author- 
itative excuse for secession ; they asserted that the states 
were free, sovereign, and independent; that they had made 
the compact called the Constitution of the United States, 
and that each state had the right to judge whether the 
compact was kept; if broken, the state could withdraw 
from the Union. 

Thirteen northern states, so ran the declaration, had 
violated the compact by their "personal liberty laws," a 
specific violation of the fourth article — the fugitive slave 
provision — of the Constitution. 

The Constitution recognized the right of property in 
slaves. Anti-slavery agitation in the North had made such 
property wholly insecure. 

"A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, 
and all the states North of that line have united in the elec- 
tion of a man to the high office of President of the United 
States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. 
He is to be entrusted with the administration of the com- 
mon government because he has declared that that 'gov- 
ernment cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' 
and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slav- 



1861-1865] CAUSES OF THE WAR 443 

ery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional 
combination for the submersion of the Constitution has 
been aided in some of the states by elevating to citizenship 
persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable 
of becoming citizens,* and their votes have been used to 
inaugurate a new policy hostile to the South and destruc- 
tive of its peace and safety." The guaranties of the Consti- 
tution, the equal rights of the states, were lost ;t therefore 
the slave states seceded in self-defense. 

But this was declared to be only a part of the reason. 
There were others of an industrial nature. "The people 
of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for 
revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue, to 
promote by prohibitions northern interests in the produc- 
tion of their mines and manufactures." The South com- 
plained that it was taxed by the people of the North for 
their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain had 
taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for the benefit 
of England. 

The government of the United States had become 
consolidated with a claim of limitless powers in its oper- 
ations. "The agitations on the subject of slavery were 
the natural results of the consolidation of the government — 
and if the people of the North had the power by Congress 
'to promote the general welfare of the United States' by 
any means they deem expedient, why should they not assail 
and overthrow the institution of slavery in the South?" 

The experiment of uniting under one government peoples 
living in different climates, and having different pursuits 
and institutions, had failed. The government of the United 
States could not be restored ; the North had been faithless 
for half a century. When the Constitution was framed, 
"there was no tariff, no fanaticism concerning negroes." 

"Time and the progress of things have totally altered the 
relations between the northern and southern states. That 
identity of feelings, interests, and institutions which once 
existed is gone. They were now divided between agri- 
cultural and manufacturing and commercial states; between 

* Immigrants from Europe. 

fConvention of South Carolina, i860, 1861, 1862, pp. 461-466. 



444 'Allt: CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

slave-holding and non-slavc-holding states. Their institu- 
tions and industrial pursuits have made them totally dif- 
ferent peoples." 

"All we (the South) demand of other peoples is to be 
left alone to work out our own high destinies. United 
together, and we must be the most independent, as we are 
among the most important of the nations of the world," 
"a confederacy of slave-holding states." * 

President Lincoln declared the policy of the national 
government in his inaugural address, March 4, 1861. It 
was as follows: 

The rights of each state to control its own domestic 
institutions according to its own judgment exclusively 
should be maintained inviolate. 

The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution and the 
fugitive slave law should be executed. 

The Union is unbroken and perpetual. 

The laws of the Union should be faithfully executed in 
all the states. 

"In doing this," said he, "there need be no bloodshed 
or violence; and there should be none, unless it was forced 
upon the national authority. The power confided to him 
would be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property 
and places belonging to the government, and to collect the 
duties and imposts; but beyond what maybe necessary for 
these objects, there would be no invasion, no using of force 
against or among the people anywhere." 

"Why might not any portion of a new confederacy a 
year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as por- 
tions of the present Union now claimed to secede from 
it?" "The central idea of secession," said Lincoln, "is 
the essence of anarchy." 

The President promptly decided to send supplies to 
Fort Sumter. When this decision was received by Gov- 
ernor F. W. Pickens, of South Carolina, he instructed 
General Beauregard to demand the surrender of the fort. 
Before daylight, of P^iday, April 12, Anderson received 
word that if he did not surrender the fort within an hour it 
would be bombarded. A shot from the battery at Cum- 

* South Carolina Convention, 1860-62, pp. 467-476. 



I 



1861-1865] FORT SUMTER 445 

mings Point announced Anderson's refusal, that Fort 
Sumter had been fired on, and that civil war was actually 
begun. 

The bombardment continued two days. Anderson 
replied with all his available batteries. The fort was soon 
in ruins; and supplies were exhausted. On Sunday, he 
accepted Beauregard's terms; evacuated the fort "with 
colors flying and drums beating" ; saluted his flag; brought 
away the tattered remnant, and with his men, embarking 
on a ship of the fleet Lincoln had sent to his aid, was car- 
ried to New York.* When the flag was saluted, a gun 
prematurely discharged caused a soldier's death. This 
was the only loss on either side. 

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas at 
once joined the Confederacy. Richmond became its capi- 
tal, at the request of Virginia. There, on the 20th of July, 
the first Confederate Congress met, and the Confederate 
government, closely modeled on that of the United States, 
was organized. Nearly all the officers in the army and 
navy who were from the South offered their services to 
the Confederacy. For months, supplies of all kinds had 
been sent, by Buchanan's secretaries, to arsenals and forts 
now in possession of the Confederacy. Every government 
in Europe, except Russia, was friendly to the Confederacy 
and sympathized with its cause. The South was compact, 
united, and confident of winning in what it called "the 
War for Southern Independence." Its temporary consti- 
tution and government gave place to a permanent one. 
Davis and Stephens were re-elected. The Confederacy 
was well equipped as a military power when it organized at 
Richmond. 

The President summoned Congress to meet in extra 
session on the 4th of July, 1861. He also on the ist of 
April asked for seventy-five thousand volunteers, "the 
militia of the several states of the Union, ' ' for three months, 
to suppress the combination formed against the United 
States and "to cause the laws to be duly executed." The 

* Edmund Ruffin, a Virginian, fired the first shot on Fort Sumter. 
He asked the privilege. Just before the war closed^when the end was 
apparent — he committed suicide. 



446 THE CIVIL WAR [i 861-1865 

volunteers were apportioned among all the states, but none 
in the Confederacy acknowledged the call, and from the 
governors of the border slave states came no troops, but a 
general denial of the right of the United States "to coerce 
a state." From the free states an army of men sprang 
up and started for Washington. There was no trouble until 
Maryland was reached. Many of its people wished to join 
the state to the Confederacy. Northern troops should not 
be allowed to cross the state. At Baltimore, bridges were 
burned, railroads torn up, and telegraph lines destroyed. 

But the volunteers pressed on. Many went around 
Baltimore to Annapolis, and by water to Washington. 
The Sixth Massachusetts regiment, while passing through 
Baltimore, was attacked by a mob ; some of its men were 
wounded, others killed. This was the 19th of April, 1861. 
On that day the first troops reached Washington, a Penn- 
sylvania regiment. It was remarked by some that the day 
was the anniversary of Lexington. The affair at Baltimore 
aroused almost as much indignation throughout the North 
as the fall of Sumter. The arrival of the Pennsylvania 
troops saved the capital, for Washington was full of south- 
ern sympathizers, who confidently expected to make it the 
capital of the Confederacy. But the five hundred and thirty 
Keystone men were only a picket-line of the army that soon 
was to converge upon Washington by the hundred thou- 
sand for the defense of the Union. 

On the 3d of May, the President, who now knew the 
temper of the people, called for more troops, 42,034 volun- 
teers and 18,000 seamen, for three years, for the law allowed 
him to ask no greater number; it had been passed nearly 
seventy years before, when Washington was made general, 
and. a French war was feared. Before Congress met, the 
United States had 183,588 under arms. 

The fate of the Union was at stake. Congress met, and 
resolved to raise any number of men and any amount of 
money to suppress the rebellion. Its magnitude was not 
at first realized. Four years of terrible war had begun. 
The national government was not prepared for war, but the 
resources of the loyal states and the devotion of the people 
speedily supplied all wants. 



1861-1865] GENERAL PLAN OF WAR 447 

The North abounded in factories, in skilled workmen, in 
inventive minds, in boundless resources, but the North was 
not a unit like the South. Secession had many friends, 
helpers, and sympathizers in the North. These northern 
men with southern sympathies were called "copperheads" 
by their political opponents, the Republicans and war Demo- 
crats. Stephen A. Douglas, the recently defeated candi- 
date for the presidency on the Democratic ticket, was as 
loyal as Lincoln, and tens of thousands of men who voted 
for him now offered their services to the government. 

After a while the general plan for the suppression of the 
rebellion cleared up, and was adhered to till the war ended. 
This general plan was, first, to maintain a strict blockade 
of the Confederacy, which was proclaimed by the President 
April 19, 1861, and was quite thoroughly enforced. It 
prevented the Confederacy from exporting a pound of its 
products and from receiving supplies of any kind, save by 
"running the blockade," which at first was easy, but soon 
became a very hazardous business. Secondly, to keep the 
border slave states — Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, and Missouri — in the Union. This was a diflficult 
thing to do. They contained a divided people; some 
favoring the Union, others the Confederacy. But they all 
kept in the Union. More than this, their number was 
increased by the creation of West Virginia out of forty- 
eight western counties of Virginia. For nearly forty years 
the people of western Virginia had been agitating separa- 
tion from Virginia. It was at last effected, and West Vir- 
ginia was admitted a free state, June 19, 1863. Thirdly, to 
surround the Confederacy by armies and fleets and crush 
it to death — the "anaconda policy," as it was called — by 
opening and controlling the Mississippi; by destroying the 
internal resources of the Confederacy, and by conquering 
its military strongholds in detail. This all reads easy, but 
it was a stupendous undertaking, and far greater than any- 
thing of the kind that had confronted any other modern 
nation. 

From a civil point of view, the South was on the aggres- 
sive; from a military point, on the defensive. The area 
of the war was from Pennsylvania to the Rio Grande, from 



448 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

the Atlantic to New Mexico, nearly one-half of the national 
domain. The United States had to blockade this vast 
area; to invade and hold it, and to carry supplies along 
with its forces. From a military point of view, the South 
had few good highways, except the rivers. These were 
soon traversed by what Lincoln called "Uncle Sam's web- 
feet," the hundreds of armed steamers of little draught. 
Neither the United States nor the Confederacy had a 
trained army. The Mexican War had trained about fifty 
of^cers, among them Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, 
Joseph E. Johnston, Albert S. Johnston, John C. Pember- 
ton, Simon B. Buckner, James Longstreet, and Ulysses S. 
Grant. Lee was a colonel and Grant a lieutenant in that 
war. Hundreds of veterans of the Mexican War volun- 
teered in the Civil War; some on one side, some on the 
other. 

When Lincoln became President, the treasury of the 
United States was nearly empty; the national debt was 
ninety million five hundred and eighty thousand dollars; 
the yearly expense of the government sixty-six million 
dollars, and the yearly revenue only forty-one million dol- 
lars. Congress increased the duties on imports; levied 
direct taxes; levied taxes on trades, occupations, and pro- 
fessions; on malt liquors, spirits, and tobacco; on incomes 
above eight hundred dollars; on bank checks, and on 
patent medicines. It empowered the Secretary of Treasury 
to issue bonds and United States notes. The cost of the 
war rapidly increased till, in 1865, the obligations of the 
government were over three million dollars a day. All this 
taxation was a burden on the people. Gold was at a prem- 
ium all through the war. Treasury notes circulated at their 
face value. 

The Confederate Congress acted in like manner. There 
was no money in the Confederate treasury, and the Con- 
gress passed a tariff law. May 21, 1861, which put duties 
on all imports except material used in educational institu- 
tions, food, military supplies, fertilizers, seeds, and house- 
hold effects; levied direct taxes on everything taxable, 
except churches, schools, and property of a household 
valued under five hundred dollars. But before the war 



1861-1865] "ON TO RICHMOND" 449 

ended, everything paid a tax. The Congress also author- 
ized the Secretary of Treasury to issue bonds and Confed- 
erate treasury notes. These notes passed at ninety-five 
cents on the dollar from January i to May i, 1861, but fell 
from that time. At the last actual sale, May i, 1865, one 
dollar in gold would buy one thousand two hundred dollars 
in notes. Before this, however, they had become practi- 
cally worthless. 

All over the North was heard the cry, "On to Rich- 
mond." Many thought, in 1861, that the war would be 
over in less than three months, and surely, if Richmond 
was taken. The troops about Washington were under the 
command of General Irwin McDowell. Across the Poto- 
mac, near Manassas Junction, lay the nearest Confederate 
army under General Beauregard. McDowell was ordered 
to attack him, and so confident was the North of victory 
that members of Congress and many citizens of Washington 
went out to witness the victory and to see the victors off 
for Richmond. On Sunday, July 12, 1861, the two armies 
met on a field named, from a stream that flows through it, 
Bull Run. A hard-fought battle followed. The Federal 
army came back in a panic to Washington. Beauregard's 
army was too exhausted to pursue. The country saw that 
Richmond and the end of the war were a long way off. 
Both armies were unorganized, and military drill now began 
in earnest. 

In the fall of 1861, the opposing forces faced each other 
along a line of separation running irregularly two thousand 
miles east and west from the Potomac to Indian Territory. 
The Army of the Potomac, under General George B. 
McClellan, faced the Army of Northern Virginia, under 
Generals Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee; the cen- 
ter, or Army of Ohio, under General D. C. Buell, confronted 
the Army of the Cumberland, under General Albert S. John- 
ston ; the Army of the West, under General Henry W. Hal- 
leck, was confronted by the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, 
under Generals B. McCuUoch and Sterling Price. 

Skirmishing, marching, and counter-marching, the 
transportation of supplies and reinforcements, and fighting 
were going on all the time. 



450 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

On the 19th of January, 1862, General Thomas, one of 
the noblest characters and ablest soldiers the war produced, 
met the Confederates at Mill Springs. A brief but fierce 
battle was fought, and the Confederate force was destroyed. 
The victory was of highest importance to the national cause. 
It gave the Union army the control of Cumberland Gap, a 
point of incalculable strategic importance, and it not only 
cleared the eastern part of Kentucky of Confederate troops, 
but gave an outlet to the loyal people of eastern Tennessee. 
It was one of Thomas's sledge-hammer blows. It left 
General Johnston's position at Bowling Green exposed. 
It was speedily followed by a greater Union victory on the 
Cumberland River. 

Early in 1862, General Grant, co-operating with Admiral 
Foote, and acting under Halleck, made Fort Henry and 
Fort Donelson his ' ' objective, ' ' or point of attack. The fleet 
silenced Fort Henry, and Grant, on the i6th of February, 
captured Fort Donelsoa. It was commanded by General 
Simon B. Buckner, whom Grant had known as a fellow 
officer in the Mexican War. Buckner wrote to Grant for 
terms. "No terms but immediate and unconditional sur- 
render," answered Grant. "I propose to move immediately 
upon your works." It was the most important victory the 
national troops had won. The pithy statement of Grant's 
dispatch was caught up by the people and put into the list 
of American sayings. Grant was called "Unconditional 
Surrender Grant," and the name stuck. This victory 
moved the line of separation in the west two hundred miles 
southward into Tennessee. Grant followed. The Army 
of the Ohio, General Buell, moved southward to Nashville 
and the Tennessee River. 

The objective of the Union armies in the west was to 
open the Mississippi River, which the Confederates con- 
trolled by powerful fleets on its waters and powerful batter- 
ies and forts on its banks. At Shiloh, Grant's army was 
attacked April 6, 1862, by Albert Sidney Johnston, who 
planned to destroy it before the Army of the Ohio could 
join it. Johnston was killed at a crisis in the battle, and 
Beauregard succeeded in command. A detached division of 
Grant's army, under General Lew Wallace, and three divi- 



1861-1865] NEW ORLEANS 451 

sions of Buell's army arrived. On the 7th, the Confederates 
were defeated and fell back to Corinth. While Grant was 
fighting at Shiloh, General Pope, co-operating with Admiral 
Foote, captured the Confederate fort on Island No. 10. 
The fleet continued down the river, captured Fort Pillow 
June 5, and Memphis June 6, utterly destroying the Con- 
federate fleet. Vicksburg remained the only obstruction to 
the free navigation of the river. 

With the Mississippi as the objective. Commodore 
Porter and General B. F. Butler, co-operating, attacked the 
Confederate defenses about New Orleans. The national 
fleet steamed past the forts, fighting, to the Confederate 
fleet above, utterly destroyed it, and passed on, captured 
New Orleans April 25, all in less than ten days. 

Corinth was the next objective. Halleck now united 
the armies under Pope, Grant, and Buell, and advanced in 
person upon Corinth. General Beauregard abandoned it, 
and the national troops took possession May 30. This 
carried the line of separation in the west as far south as 
northern Mississippi. Halleck was suddenly ordered to 
Washington to act as military adviser to the government. 
Buell was directed to make Chattanooga his objective. 
Grant, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, was left 
to fight two armies — General Price and General Van Dorn. 
General Braxton Bragg succeeded Beauregard, and moved 
his army by rail to meet Buell at Chattanooga. He forced 
Buell to fall back to Louisville, on the Ohio. Reinforced 
here, Buell resumed the offensive, and defeated Bragg at 
Perryville, Kentucky. Bragg then fell back to Murfrees- 
boro, Tennessee. 

Grant had to defend a line extending one hundred and 
fifty miles. Price and Van Dorn attacked him at several 
points. They were defeated at luka, September 20, and at 
Corinth, October 4, where Rosecrans not only won victory, 
but put an end to the war in that part of the country. 

The next objective was Vicksburg, the last Confederate 
stronghold on the Mississippi, covered by the armies of 
Price and Van Dorn, and occupied by a garrison com- 
manded by General Pemberton. Grant's forces were scat- 
tered. He concentrated most of them at Oxford, Missis- 



452 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

sippi, December 2, 1862, sent Sherman back to Memphis, 
his base of supplies, to organize a force there, and to move 
against Vicksburg direct by the river; Grant himself mean- 
while preventing Pembcrton from detaching any part of 
his own force. But Pemberton sent Van Dorn to cut off 
Grant's supplies, and compelled him to fall back to Mem- 
phis. Sherman found Vicksburg too strong to be taken. 
Grant came to Vicksburg to take charge of the siege in per- 
son. Admiral Porter's fleet ran the batteries by night, and 
passed above Vicksburg. Grant cut off its supplies on the 
land side, and prevented General Joseph E. Johnston from 
relieving Pemberton. The siege ended with the surrender 
of the place to Grant on the 4th of July, 1863. As Lincoln 
said, the Mississippi now ran "unvexed to the sea." One 
part of the grand plan of war was thus carried through 
successfully. 

The central line of separation was at Murfreesboro, 
Tennessee, and Perry ville, Kentucky, in December, 1862. 
There Buell confronted Bragg. Buell was displaced by 
Rosecrans. At Murfreesboro, on the Stone River, a bloody 
battle was fought, January 2, 1863. Bragg fell back to 
Chattanooga. A series of great battles now began. Bragg, 
reinforced by General Longstreet, with a portion of the 
Army of Virginia, moved on triumphantly against Rose- 
crans's army till the 20th of September, when his triumph 
was stayed by General George H. Thomas, the "Rock of 
Chickamauga," commanding the Fourteenth corps. Rose- 
crans took Chattanooga, his objective, but was straightway 
besieged by Bragg. 

Reinforcements were sent, those under General Joseph 
Hooker, a Mexican veteran, from Washington; those 
under Sherman, from Vicksburg; Thomas superseded 
Rosecrans, and Grant, now put in command of the three 
armies, of the Cumberland, of Tennessee, and of the Ohio, 
hastened from Vicksburg to take command in person. At 
Knoxville, one hundred and ten miles away, was Burnside's 
army. Bragg, confident that he was more than a match 
for Grant, and that the national armies before him must 
soon be compelled by starvation to surrender, detached 
Longstreet to destroy Burnside. Grant attacked Bragg 



1861-1865] THE TRENT AFFAIR 453 

November 24, 1863, fought "the battle above the clouds" 
at Lookout Mountain and on the 25th the battle of Mission- 
ary Ridge, utterly routed the Confederates, and sent help 
to Burnside. Not only was the Mississippi opened, but the 
vast region betwen it and the AUeghanies was in the pos- 
session of Union armies. It was the scene of many skir- 
mishes later, but of no more such terrible battles. At the 
close of 1863, the Confederacy was shut in between the 
Atlantic and the Cumberland Mountains, the Rapidan River 
in Virginia, and the Gulf of Mexico. This was a vast area, 
but less than a third of the Confederate area in 1861. 

Nothing has been said of military operations in the east. 
Let us briefly outline them. When the war began, General 
Winfield Scott was in command of the United States army. 
He was a child of three when Washington was inaugurated. 
On the 1st of November, 1861, he was retired on account 
of age, and George B. McClellan was appointed to succeed 
him. Before his retirement. General Scott outlined the 
grand plan of suppressing the rebellion already mentioned. 
General McClellan organized and drilled the Army of the 
Potomac. At the opening of 1862, it confronted the Army 
of Virginia, commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. 

The Confederacy sent James M. Mason and John 
Slidell, formerly Senators of the United States, as com- 
missioners at large to win the support of France and Eng- 
land. Leaving Charleston on a blockade runner, they 
reached Havana, and there took passage on the Trent, a 
British mail steamer. Captain Charles Wilkes, in the San 
Jacinto, a United States war-vessel, overhauled the Trent, 
November 8, 1861, took off the commissioners, let the mail 
steamer pass on, and brought the two men and their secre- 
taries to port. Earl Russell promptly demanded proper 
redress — the apology of the United States and the restitu- 
tion of the prisoners. 

The affair stirred feelings of hostility in both nations. 
England prepared for war. President Lincoln expressed 
the logic of the situation in a few words: "One war at a 
time." Secretary Seward replied at length to Earl Russell. 
He said Wilkes had acted without authority. He might 
have said that the United States had fought the War of 



454 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

1 8 12 in protest against "the right of search." The prison- 
ers were finally delivered on board an English vessel, and 
went on their way to Europe. 

On January 27, 1862, the President, dissatisfied with 
McClellan's inactivity, issued his "General Order No. i," 
that all the armies should simultaneously advance against 
the Confederates, February 22. McClellan, obeying the 
order, found that the Confederates had withdrawn behind 
the Rappahannock. On the 23d of July, McClellan was 
relieved of the chief command, and restricted to command 
of the Army of the Potomac. A series of engagements 
now began, culminating in the battle of Fair Oaks, May 
31. Here Johnston was wounded, and Robert E. Lee 
succeeded him in command of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia. The seven days' battle from Gaines's Mill to Har- 
rison's Landing, June 2 5- July i, followed, which was 
a long and costly retreat for the Army of the Potomac. 
McClellan had been an officer in the Mexican War. Like 
most of the officers already named, he was a graduate of 
West Point. It was to take McClellan's place as com- 
mander-in-chief that Halleck had been summoned from 
Corinth. The Army of the Potomac was again in front of 
Washington, in August, 1862, confronted now by General 
Lee. General Pope was called east and put in charge of 
the forces immediately around Washington. He was con- 
fronted by General ' ' Stonewall" Jackson. The second battle 
of Bull Run was fought by their two armies, and Pope was 
defeated, though he prevented Lee from reaching Wash- 
ington. 

When the Confederacy seized the forts, arsenals, and 
navy-yards of the South, it found at Portsmouth, Virginia, 
a number of vessels on the stocks. The naval superintend- 
ent before leaving the place to the Confederates ruined the 
property as far as he could, sank ships, and threw machin- 
ery into the sea. The Confederates repaired damages, and 
transformed an old-style wooden cruiser called the Merri- 
mac into a powerful ram, covering it with railroad iron and 
renaming it the Virginia. A wooden fleet was at this time 
blockading Chesapeake Bay. Leisurely the Virginia pro- 
ceeded to destroy this helpless fleet. 



1861-1865] MONITOR AND MERRIMAC 455 

The Cumberland, one of the fleet, was struck again and 
again. In vain she rained her fire upon the Merrimac. 
Not a shot had the sh'ghtest effect, and the Cumberland 
went down, her guns steadily firing till they were filled with 
water, and her flag flying till she sank out of sight. Then 
the Congress, another fine ship, met her fate, surrendered, 
and was burned. Night came, and the Virginia went back 
to the Elizabeth River to wait for daylight, before destroy- 
ing the remainder of the fleet. 

During the night of March 8, a curious thing had 
arrived from New York, called the Monitor, designed by 
John Ericsson, who, in 1839, had built the first screw pro- 
peller in England, and crossed the ocean with it. The 
Monitor had an iron hull, a deck of iron nearly even with 
the water, and on deck an iron cylinder, revolving by 
machinery and carrying two guns. Her length was one 
hundred and seventy-two feet, her width forty-one feet. 
She drew ten feet of water. The turret was twenty feet in 
diameter and ten feet high. Her entire construction was 
novel. On her way down from New York she encountered 
a severe storm. Her commander. Lieutenant John L. Wor- 
den, and his men suffered for lack of air and from the mo- 
tion of the novel craft. She arrived in time to witness the 
destruction of the Congress. 

News of the disaster to the fleet was telegraphed all 
over the country. Every port in the United States was at 
the mercy of the Merrimac. There was cause for alarm. 

Early on Sunday morning, March 9, the Merrimac 
steamed down to complete her work, when from behind the 
Minnesota the Monitor glided out, "a cheese-box on a 
raft." The circular turret moved in quick succession, 
heavy shot poured forth from the Monitor, every one of 
which struck the Merrimac, but with no apparent effect. 
The Merrimac tried in vain to get past, but finally replied 
and sent her broadsides against the turret of the Monitor, 
but every shot fell harmless. Leaving the Monitor then, 
the Merrimac turned upon the Minnesota, which was 
aground, her men in amazement watching the strange 
duel. Her ponderous shot struck the hull of the wooden 
ship, and set her on fire. Quickly the flames were sub- 



45^ IIIK CIVIL WAR [i86r 1865 

(hied. I'licn the Monitor caiiic down upon tlic Mcrrim.ic, 
forti'd Ik I to cIkui^^c- position, and slu." went a;^ronnd. 
With cdoit she ^ot o(r and luiiicd her prow toward iicr 
anihora^c. Hut tlic Monitor [)ursuc'd, ponrinj^ u[)on her 
an incessant stream of heavy shc)t. 'I'he Merriniac suddenly 
turned and tried to lain the Monitor, hut her prow glanced 
and lier wooden Iiull was c-xposed. The Monitor sent one 
of her sohd shot fair and scpiare against the Merrimac, and 
in(K'ntc:d hut did not jxiutrate her casini;. 

'1 her Ml iriinac withdrew, and a woo(h-n warship has not 
been built from that (hiy to this. I'lriesson's Monitor had 
not merely savi-d the (leet ; it had changed the navies and 
the naval history of all the nations of the world. When 
Norfolk fell into the hands of the [government, the officers 
and crew of the Merrimac, on the iith of May, 1S62, ran 
her ashore and blew hci- up. In Jaimary, iSf)^, the Moni- 
tor, whiK- on her w.iy undir sealed orders, went to the bot- 
tom in a storm off C'ape llatteras. 

'The I're-sident proclainuul the blockade of the Confeder- 
ate coast in April i Sf) 1 . A true blockade, unlike Napo- 
leon's "paper blockade" of (Ireat Hrilain in I <Soo, must be 
maintainc:d by the active jjresence of arnu:d cruisers. At 
the opening- of the war, the United .States was not prepared 
to close in every port and bay aloni; its two thousand iniles 
of coast, l^ut vessels were built or transformed from com- 
mercial craft with amazing rapidit\', and the blockade was a 
terrible reality to the .South all through the war. It was 
essential to the" United States, because the Confederate 
States could produce lu-.uly five million bales of cotton every 
year which could be: exchanj^ed in ICurope for supplies of 
all kinds. Most of the cotton used in the factories of I'.ni;- 
land came from the United States. The sudden cessation 
of the supply niade a cotton famine in l''.ni;land, and was 
one reason why public opinion in I'.nidand was for a time 
so stroni;;ly in favor of the Confi'dei.icy. 

Hut the plain pi-ople, the ICn^lish working-classes sym- 
pathized with the United .States. llowever, cotton must 
be had by l'aii;land, and must be sold by the Confederate 
States, if possible. Hundreds of blockade-runners kept up 
a stealthy cotton trade. They ran into southern jiorts from 



i<S6i-i«65| Till'; ALAUAMA 457 

tlic Jiritish West Indies, and chiefly from Nassau. They 
were built for speed, strength, and deception, and were 
manned by resolute crews. Their capture became the 
regular business of the navy, which succeeded in taking or 
destroyinf^ more than fifteen hundred of them. 

The Confederacy built warships on the James River, at 
Norfolk, at I'ortsmouth, Virginia, at CharleiitcMi, at New 
Orleans, and in Liverp(;ol, Mnj^land. These were intended 
for the destruction of the merchant ships of the North, and 
the intention was carried out. The most powerful and 
destructive of these cruisers, the Florida, the Alabama, 
and the Shenandoah, were built in Mn^land, and hatided 
over to the Confederate {government, in spite of the protest 
of the United .States minister to ICngland, Charles l^rancis 
Adams. The English government allowed the Mf;rida and 
the Alabama to be built, and though at peace with the 
United .States, suffered them to go forth in the Confederate 
service. Jiut the I^nglish government was not a parly to 
the transaction. It was a case of fillibustering highly exas- 
perating to the loyal people of the Uin'ted States. 'I'he 
matter almost caused us a third war with Mngland. 
The TMorida, after damaging our commerce nearly a year 
and a half, was captured by the Wachusett, a United .States 
warshij), in the harbor of Jiahia, IJra/il. This was a vio- 
lation of our treaty with Brazil, as we were at j)eace with 
that country. Our government ordered the return of the 
J^'lorida to Hra/il, but she was fjlown up, it is said by acci- 
dent, in llaini)ton Roads. 

The Alabama, known also as "290," cruised the world 
around, and became the terror of our merchant shi[)s. 
The Kearsarge came upon her in the- harbor of Cherbourg, 
France, and challenged her to fight. On the \(jth of June, 
1864, the challenge was accepted, and after a terrible fight, 
lasting an hour and three minutes, the Alabama struck her 
colors, and sorm after sank. Iler f;fficers and many of 
her crew were rescued by an iCnfdisIi yacht and escaped. 

'J'he .Shenrmdoah was the last ship purchased by the 
Confederacy. She- was originally a liritish Mast Indiaman, 
the Sea King, l)ut was overhaided, sailed from Liverf)Of»l 
October 8, 1X64, and received her officers and her arma- 



458 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

ment at sea. She was equipped specially to destroy the 
North Pacific American whaling fleet. Her course was a 
wake of ruin. She was in the midst of her career, when in 
June, 1865, two months after Lee's surrender, she heard 
of the fall of the Confederacy. She then returned to Eng- 
land. Among the blockade-runners was the English-built 
Atlanta, renamed the Tallahassee, which haunted the New 
England coast in 1864, and wrought havoc with the coast 
trade. 

The Sumter was a sea-going steamer, altered into a 
cruiser at New Orleans, leaving that port in July, 1861. 
For six months she ranged the highways of trade and rav- 
aged out merchant marine. She was sold in 1862, at Gi- 
braltar, to escape capture and her captain, Raphael Sem- 
mes, was transferred to the Alabama. 

General Lee now took the offensive, invaded Maryland, 
was joined by Jackson at Antietam, where September 17, 
he was overtaken by McClellan, and a great battle was 
fought. Lee retired into Virginia. McClellan was relieved 
of command, and General Ambrose E. Burnside was put in 
his place. Burnside took the offensive, crossed the Rappa- 
hannock, and attacked Lee, though in vain, at Fredericks- 
burg, December 13. Burnside was removed from his com- 
mand and General Hooker appointed, who crossed the 
Rapidan, fought Lee at Chancellorsville May 4, and re- 
treated to the north bank of the Rappahannock. 

Lee now took the offensive again, crossed Maryland, in- 
vaded Pennsylvania, and attacked General George B. Meade, 
who had been put in Hooker's place, while the army was 
on the march. At Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, Lee was 
defeated; his army fell back south of the Rappahannock, 
and Meade's army leisurely following, the two armies con- 
fronted each other on familiar ground. Lee's defeat at 
Gettysburg and the surrender at Vicksburg were on the 
same day. 

Looking back now to the days of the war, slavery seems 
different than it did then. Neither the United States nor 
the Confederate states would have said that they went to 
war solely on account of slavery. But as the war continued 
on a more and more stupendous scale, the feeling of the 



1861-1865] EMANCIPATION 459 

people of the free states changed respecting slavery. "Let 
it be abolished" was the idea that rapidly drove out all 
others. President Lincoln said clearly in his first inaugural 
that he would not interfere with it in the states. His 
famous speech of 1858 on "the house divided against 
itself" has already been noticed. But as the war went on, 
the question of slavery came up in a new light. The Con- 
federacy was in arms against the government, and derived 
its support from slave labor. As the national armies gained 
possession of Confederate territory, thousands of slaves fell 
into their hands. What should be done with them? They 
could not be returned to their owners. They could not be 
held by the United States. They were a new kind of 
"contraband of war." 

In March, 1862, the President proposed to Congress a 
plan of emancipation at national expense; the government 
to buy the slaves at three hundred dollars or four hundred 
dollars apiece. But the border states, who had to be con- 
sulted in the matter, as they were loyal and slave-holding, 
refused to accept any such proposition. The Confederacy 
asked recognition from the nations of Europe. They hesi- 
tated to recognize it, largely because it was slave-holding. 
But so was the United States. What, then, was the war 
about, as the outside world saw it? Or was it a war for 
freedom on the one side and for slavery on the other? 

Public opinion in the loyal states had practically reached 
the last conclusion. But the national armies, down to mid- 
summer, 1862, had not met with great success. Lincoln 
had watched public opinion anxiously and carefully. It 
was his guide. He resolved to express it in a proclamation 
respecting slavery, but lest the motive might be miscon- 
strued as one of fear, he waited for a Union victory. An- 
tietam was fought and Lee retreated into Virginia. Then 
the President, in compliance with a solemn vow which he 
had secretly made that a proclamation should follow Lee's 
retreat, issued, on the 22d of September, 1862, a prelimi- 
nary emancipation proclamation, declaring: 

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all 
persons held as slaves within any state — the people whereof 



460 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

shall then be in rebellion against the United States — shall 
be then, thenceforth and forever free." The first of Janu- 
ary came; rebellion continued; the President issued his 
emancipation proclamation, freeing the slaves in designated 
portions of the Union. 

Of this famous proclamation, it is to be said that — 

It freed the slaves only in the parts of the United States 
which were in rebellion on the day the proclamation issued. 
While it did not abolish slavery, nor free slaves in the loyal 
slave-holding states, nor free slaves in those portions of the 
Confederate states held by the armies of the United States, 
it was "an act of justice and of military necessity," war- 
ranted by the national Constitution, and was at once popu- 
larly interpreted as the end of slavery, and made the war, 
as far as the United States was concerned, a war for free- 
dom, and as far as the Confederate states were concerned, 
a war for slavery. The proclamation practically gave free- 
dom to nearly four million human beings. 

On the 1st of February, 1865, Congress passed the Thir- 
teenth Amendment, abolishing slavery in the United States. 
By the nth of December it was ratified by twenty-eight 
states, and later by five more. It was proclaimed a part 
of the Constitution December 18, 1865. 

In May, 1864, a convention of radical Republicans 
met in Cleveland, Ohio, to nominate a ticket for President 
and Vice-President. They were members of the Repub- 
lican party who thought Lincoln too mild and too com- 
promising. They demanded a more aggressive policy. 
Among their demands was one for "the confiscation of the 
lands of the rebels and their distribution among the soldiers 
and actual settlers." By actual settlers were meant the 
negroes, and the land distribution was declared to be an 
act of justice. John C. Fremont, of California, and John 
C. Cochrane, of New York, were nominated. 

The regular Republican convention met in Baltimore in 
June, renominated Lincoln, and associated Andrew John- 
son, of Tennessee, on the ticket as Vice-President. The 
platform declared that slavery should be abolished; that 
negro soldiers in the national service were entitled to the 
full protection of the laws of war; that foreign immigration 



1861-1865] ELECTION, 1864 461 

should be encouraged; that a railroad to the Pacific coast 
should be built, and that the Monroe doctrine should be 
enforced. This last clause was inserted because of the 
interference of Napoleon III. in the affairs of Mexico. 

In August, the Democrats met in Chicago, and nomi- 
nated General McClellan, of New Jersey, and George H. 
Pendleton, of Ohio, The platform declared the war a fail- 
ure; that the Union was not restored, and that the Lincoln 
administration had in various ways violated the Constitu- 
tion. 

General McClellan repudiated the platform in his letter 
of acceptance, and Fremont withdrew, declining to run 
against Lincoln. 

None of the Confederate states voted. West Virginia 
and Nevada, the latter admitted October 31, 1864, and 
twenty-two other states participated in the election. Of 
the popular votes, Lincoln and Johnson received 2,2 16,067, 
and of the electoral votes, 212; McClellan and Pendleton 
were given 1,808,725 popular votes and 21 electoral votes. 
Lincoln's second inauguration occurred March 4, 1865. 
His second inaugural ranks among the world's classic 
speeches. It was a brief review of the preceding four years, 
and a sign of the future. It is not strange that the thou- 
sands who heard him utter it were profoundly moved by 
his closing words: "With malice toward none; with charity 
for all ; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the 
right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind 
up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do 
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves, and with all nations." 

On the 9th of March, 1864, President Lincoln commis- 
sioned Ulysses S. Grant lieutenant-general, and com- 
mander-in-chief of all the national armies. The rank of 
vice-admiral, equal in grade to that of lieutenant-general, 
was created, and conferred on Admiral David G. Farragut. 
The rank created for Washington and conferred on him in 
1798 was revived by Congress, with the understanding that 
Grant should receive it from the President. Grant received 
the commission at Washington, in person, and speedily 



462 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

returned to Nashville, where on the i8th he turned the 
command of the western armies over to General William T. 
Sherman. At a conference between these commanders a 
plan to end the war was agreed on. All the national armies 
should assume the offensive and by concentric lines converge 
upon the enemy; that is, upon General Lee's army in Vir- 
ginia and General Johnston's in Georgia. 

On the 4th of May, 1864, Grant crossed the Rapidan. 
General Meade was in command of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, but acted directly under Grant's orders. Eleven 
months of constant fighting now began. Grant never 
retreated. It was ever "Forward by the left flank" with 
him. A series of terribly destructive battles followed. 
General Lee was on the defensive, behind intrenchments, 
and moving on short lines in a familiar and friendly coun- 
try. General Grant was on the offensive, attacking strong 
intrenchments, and moving in long lines in an unfriendly 
country. It was one continuous battle, though known by 
different names, as Lee fell back and Grant pushed on. 
At Spottsylvania, the battle raged twelve days, till the loth 
of May, when Lee fell back to the defenses of Richmond. 
Here for ten months the battle raged. Lee was penned, 
but unconquered. 

General Lee received supplies from the central South, 
but immediately from the rich Cumberland Valley of Vir- 
ginia. Through this he ordered General Jubal Early to make 
a raid on Washington, and thus to weaken Grant. Though 
the raid was unsuccessful, it showed Grant that the Con- 
federates still had an easy highway over which to invade 
the North. Moreover, the valley fed Lee's army. Early 
had taken position at Winchester, Virginia. Grant brought 
General Philip H. Sheridan from the west to take command 
of the cavalry of the eastern army, to drive out Early, and 
to cut off Lee's further supplies from the valley. On the 
19th of September, Sheridan attacked Early, fighting the 
battle of Cedar Creek and routing him. Early reorganized 
his army, and in Sheridan's absence attacked the Union 
army, and broke it up in confusion. At a critical moment, 
Sheridan arrived, turned defeat into victory, and completely 
destroyed Early's army. The valley ceased being a base 



1861-1865] GENERAL THOMAS 463 

of supplies to General Lee; these must come from the 
South. Meanwhile, great events had been occurring else- 
where. 

On the plan of the Merrimac, the Confederates built the 
ram Tennessee, supposed to be the most powerful warship 
afloat. She was brought down to defend Mobile, which, 
with its cordon of forts, in August, 1864, Admiral Farra- 
gut, with a fleet of twenty-one wooden vessels and four 
monitors, proceeded to attack. A terrible battle followed. 
The national fleet advanced up the bay, bombarded the 
forts, met and captured the formidable Tennessee, and 
later, in co-operation with a small Union land force, com- 
pelled all the forts, including Morgan and Gaines, to sur- 
render. The city was not captured till April, 1865. 

The army of General Johnston, at Dalton, Georgia, was 
one of the two great objectives against which the Union 
forces were to be directed when General Grant laid down 
the plan for closing the war. Against this army General 
Sherman moved, when Grant moved against Lee, early in 
May, 1864. General Johnson fell back from point to point. 
In July he was superseded by General John B. Hood, who, 
the Confederate government thought, was a better fighter. 

Battle now succeeded battle. Hood fell back; Sher- 
man occupied Atlanta September 2, 1864, but Hood's 
army, as Sherman says, "had escaped." Would he raid 
Kentucky and Tennessee, attack Sherman, or join General 
Lee, or fall back farther? Hood pushed on to Nashville, 
and invested the city, held by General Thomas. On the 
1 6th of December, Thomas moved out of his intrench- 
ments, and attacked and destroyed Hood's army as com- 
pletely as Sheridan had destroyed Early's in October. 

Richmond remained the Confederate stronghold, sup- 
plied from the southward. To cut off these supplies, 
Sherman marched from Atlanta to Savannah, the famous 
"march to the sea," November 15-December 21. With 
the destruction of Hood's army, the war in the west came 
to an end. But Johnston was at the head of an army in 
North Carolina. Sherman's "march to the sea" not only 
devastated the garden of the Confederacy, it brought his 
army to the coast, to a new base from which he could act 



464 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

closely with General Grant. Turning northward from 
Savannah, Sherman moved upon Goldsboro, North Caro- 
lina, near which reinforcements, under General J. M. Scho- 
field, from Nashville, joined him. The consolidated armies 
under Sherman consumed the supplies that Lee depended 
on for existence. The Confederacy in the early spring of 
1865 was confined to Virginia below the James River, and 
to the western part of North and South Carolina. Rich- 
mond and its intrenchments were all that seemed left of it. 

On the 1st of April, 1865, General Sheridan, at the 
battle of Five Forks, cut off the line of Lee's supplies. 
One escape remained to Lee, to make a junction with 
Johnston and to prolong the war in the mountains. Grant 
prevented this by heading Lee ofT at Appomattox, where, 
on the 9th of April, he surrendered the Army of Northern 
Virginia to Grant. 

The two commanders met for the first time since the 
Mexican War. Lee was the elder by sixteen years. Grant 
drew the terms of surrender, and they were simple and 
generous. The officers, for themselves and their men, 
agreed not to take up arms against the United States "until 
properly exchanged." Then they all went home, taking 
their horses with them, which Grant said they would want 
"to work their little farms." Neither General Lee nor any 
of his officers was asked to surrender his sword. Grant 
forbade all signs of rejoicing in his army, and ordered his 
commissary to issue twenty-five thousand rations to Lee's 
men, partly at Lee's suggestion. 

A week later, Johnston surrendered to Sherman, on the 
same terms. Before surrender General Lee had informed 
JefTerson Davis that Richmond could be held no longer. 
The Confederate President and his cabinet fled southward, 
taking with them the archives of the Confederate govern- 
ment and what coin remained in its treasury. At Irwins- 
ville, Georgia, Davis was captured, on the loth of May, by 
a company of United States cavalry. 

On the 14th of April, 1865, General Anderson raised 
over Fort Sumter the tattered flag he had hauled down just 
four years before. It was saluted by the shore batteries, 
by the ships in the harbor, and by millions of loyal hearts 



1861-1865] THE ARMIES DISBAND 465 

all over the country. Appomattox was speedily followed 
by the fall of Richmond, and people were rejoicing through- 
out the Union that the war was over. Suddenly, amidst 
the rejoicing, the news flashed over the country that Lin- 
coln had been assassinated. The wearied President had 
sought a slight diversion from the burdens of his office the 
night of April 14, in attending Ford's Theater with Mrs. 
Lincoln. The play was going on, when the report of a 
pistol was heard ; a man was seen to leap from the Presi- 
dent's box, to stand for a moment on the stage, to brandish 
a dagger, and shout '' Sic semper tyrannis!'' before vanishing 
behind the scenery. Then the audience was horrified to 
discover that all this was not a part of the play. The 
President had been shot through the head; the assassin 
had escaped. Lincoln died in the early morning. John 
Wilkes Booth, the assassin, was hunted down, was dis- 
covered in a barn near the Rappahannock River, and 
refusing to surrender, was shot by a Union soldier. 

It was discovered that the assassination of the President 
caried out only a part of a terrible conspiracy. Its mem- 
bers were found, tried, and punished. The principals were 
hanged. 

Andrew Johnson, who became President on the morn- 
ing of Lincoln's death, was ill qualified to perform the duties 
of the great office at the conclusion of a terrible civil war, 
when our political institutions were in a state of reorgani- 
zation. Yet it should not be forgotten that no President 
before him, save Lincoln, had faced so gigantic a task. 
Lincoln was buried amidst the lamentations of the people. 
When he was dead, they began to discover how great and 
good he was. In him the South lost its best friend. 

From the ist of July, 1861, to the ist of May, 1865, 
two million men had been on the muster-rolls of the Union 
army. Nearly eight hundred thousand were "present" for 
duty when the war closed. In the last week of May, the 
veterans marched in grand review, for the last time together, 
down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Never had 
the world witnessed such a sight. For two days, the 23d 
and 24th, the matchless procession, extending thirty miles, 
marched on, its bands playing, its tattered flags fluttering 



466 THE CIVIL WAR [1861-1865 

in the breeze. The nation seemed present to greet the 
brave men who had saved the Union. It was not alone 
the President and his cabinet, nor Congress, nor Grant, nor 
Sherman, nor Sheridan, nor Thomas, nor Meade, nor Han- 
cock, whom the nation honored, but the common soldier as 
well. But what of the great company, three hundred and 
fifty thousand strong, who had gone to the front and never 
returned? Here was the grand review of the living, there 
was the "bivouac of the dead." And in the silent com- 
pany there were as many more of those who had worn the 
gray. 

Europe, the continent of wars, looked on amazed. 
The soldiers of the Republic, North and South, broke 
ranks, and in a day vanished into the usual occupations of 
life. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

RECONSTRUCTION 

1865-1877 

The ten years immediately following the war, usually 
spoken of as "the era of reconstruction," were years of 
confusion, of counter-revolution, of political agitation, and 
of reorganization. The people of the United States had very 
serious problems on hand. Chief of these were the pacifi- 
cation and government of the late Confederate states, the 
status and treatment of the negroes, and the payment of 
the national debt. What relation did these states bear to 
the United States? Were they in or out of the Union? 
What was to be done with the negroes? Were they citi- 
zens? What were their rights? Who should protect them? 
How should the national debt be managed and paid? 

Lincoln said in his first inaugural that the Union was 
perpetual and unbroken. On the 8th of December, 1863, 
he had issued a "proclamation of amnesty and reconstruc- 
tion" to all who would lay down their arms and swear 
allegiance to the government, excepting members of the 
Confederate government and others who, as United States 
or state officers, had sworn to support the national Consti- 
tution. The proclamation reached the mass of southern 
men. If one-tenth of those in the several Confederate 
states who had voted in i860 would re-establish state 
governments, republican in form, the United States would 
recognize them as true governments. Louisiana, Arkan- 
sas, Virginia, and Tennessee acted on the President's plan, 
but Congress refused to recognize them. These states had 
made new constitutions, and chosen Congressmen and 
Senators who came to Washington. Congress refused 
to admit them, and the electoral vote of these states was 
not counted in 1864. Lincoln's last public speech was on 
April 1 1, 1865, and it was mainly a discussion of reconstruc- 

467 



468 RECONSTRUCTION [1865 

tion. Passing over the question whether the southern 
states were in or out of the Union, he said that the sole 
object of the government was "to again get them into 
proper practical relation with the Union." The radical 
Republicans did not like his speech; but sudden death put 
an end to whatever plan Lincoln had worked out in his 
mind. 

Congress insisted that reconstruction was not a matter 
for the executive to regulate; that Congress alone has the 
right to determine what is a "republican form of govern- 
ment" in a state. Therefore, Congress and not the Presi- 
dent should take the lead. 

But the new President had an entirely different idea. 
The collapse of the Confederacy and the complicity of the 
southern state governments, he claimed, had put an end to 
civil government in the South. The President was the 
person, under the Constitution, to restore order and civil 
government there. He therefore proceeded to execute 
the United States laws in the South. The blockade was 
raised; the mail service was resumed, and the customs and 
internal taxes were ordered to be collected. Over each of 
the late Confederate states the President placed a provis- 
ional governor, instructing him to execute all state laws 
applicable to the new state of affairs, and to call a conven- 
tion which should make a new constitution for the state. 

All this was done. The conventions met in 1865, made 
new state constitutions, passed ordinances repealing all 
secession acts of whatever kind, abolished slavery, ratified 
the Thirteenth Amendment, held elections, chose state 
officials in every department, elected United States Sena- 
tors and Congressmen, and sent thes^ and their new con- 
stitutions to Congress. But Congress refused to recognize 
any of these reconstruction acts, rejected the constitutions, 
and refused to admit the Senators and Representatives. 
This action of Congress brought the question of reconstruc- 
tion into politics and disclosed a serious antagonism between 
Congress and the President. 

The radical objection to these first constitutions was 
their treatment of the negro. They permitted only white 
men to hold office ; they permitted only white men to vote, 



i866-i868] AMENDMENT XIV 469 

and they excluded negroes from the basis of representation. 
Only the white inhabitants were included in this basis, but 
the property of all, white and black, was to be taxed. 

Though the southern states had repudiated all the seces- 
sion acts, had abolished slavery, and ratified the Thirteenth 
Amendment, they had left the negro without citizenship. 
They passed laws for the government of "freedmen, free 
negroes and mulattoes" which practically put the negroes 
in a condition of slavery. There was a great variety of 
these laws in force in the South when Congress met in 
December, 1865. 

The President's reconstruction measures and the new 
southern constitutions were ignored by Congress, and that 
body took up the problem of securing civil and political 
rights to negroes. A civil rights bill was passed April 9, 
1866, which made the negro a citizen of the United States. 
But this did not make him a citizen of a state, with the right 
to vote. On the i6th of June, 1867, Congress passed the 
Fourteenth Amendment, and sent it to the states for ratifi- 
cation. No state lately in the rebellion could be admitted 
into the Union until it had ratified this amendment. 

Congress then proceeded to apply its own method of 
reconstruction. The Confederate states were subdivided 
into five military districts, each in charge of an officer of 
the United States army. In March and July, 1867, acts 
were passed specifying in what manner elections should be 
held in the South, and who should be permitted to vote. 
An oath, called by some "the iron-clad oath," was exacted 
of all voters. It kept out all those who, having once sworn 
allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, had 
violated their oath by taking up arms. Arkansas, Florida, 
North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and 
Georgia ratified the Fourteenth Amendment by the 21st of 
July, 1868. This made the requisite number of states, with 
the twenty-three which had already ratified, and it was 
proclaimed apart of the Constitution July 28, 1868. This 
amendment was intended to correct the faults of the recon- 
struction constitutions of 1865. The southern states made 
new constitutions, in conformity with its principles, in 1868, 
and chose Representatives and United States Senators. 



470 RECONSTRUCTION [1867-1868 

These were admitted to seats in Congress, and by 1870 all 
the states were again represented in that body.* 

On the 30th of March, 1867, the country and the world 
in general were surprised to hear that Russia had sold the 
United States, for seven million two hundred thousand 
dollars, the province of Alaska. Never before had the 
Russian government consented to dispose of any of its 
territory. All through the war that government had given 
evidence of strong friendship for our own. The fur-bear- 
ing seal was supposed to be the chief source of wealth in 
the region. Our government granted exclusive seal privi- 
leges to a company. This eventually produced disputes 
and led up to the Alaska seal-fishery complications of later 
years. The purchase of Alaska added 577,390 square miles 
to our national domain, at a cost of two cents an acre. 

On the i6th of July, 1868, the Senate ratified a treaty 
with China. Anson Burlingame, our minister to that coun- 
try, was commissioned by its emperor a special envoy to all 
the western nations. He was the first representative ever 
sent by China to Europe or America. Some of the Euro- 
pean powers did not favor the idea that an American should 
be selected for so extraordinary a mission. The Chinese 
embassy, with Burlingame at its head, arrived in San Fran- 
cisco on the last day of March, 1868. Mr. Burlingame 
then discovered that the Empire of China had no flag. He 
was ingenious enough to make one out of the "dragon," 
the Chinese mark of empire, and some yellow cloth, the 
imperial color. The treaty with China opened its ports 
favorably to American trade. 

This important event did not mark the first appearance 
of the American flag in the Far East. In 1853-54, Com- 
modore O. C. Perry, acting under orders of President Fill- 
more, had conducted an American squadron to Japan, and 
succeeded in opening the ports of that country, until that 
time closed to the western world. A treaty of amity and 
commerce with the United States followed, March 31, 
1854. This opened up Japan; awoke it from its oriental 
slumber of ages, and was the primary cause of those extraor- 

*For a detailed account of the reconstniction period, see my Con- 
stitutional History of the United States, 1765-1895, Vol. III. 



I 



1868J IMPEACHMENT OF JOHNSON 471 

dinary changes which have transformed Japan into a great 
modern power. No other nation in the annals of history 
has made equal progress in so brief a time. Perry's expe- 
dition may be said to have resulted in the re-creation of 
Japan. 

When Congress passed its reconstruction act of 1868, 
it passed another to prevent the President from defeating 
its execution. This was the "Tenure of Of^ce" act. The 
Constitution vests in the President the power to appoint to 
office, with the consent of the Senate ; it does not require 
the consent of the Senate to removal from office. Congress 
feared that President Johnson would remove from office 
the men favorable to its plan of reconstruction, and thus, 
by failing to carry it out, to cause it to fall through. To 
prevent this, it passed the "Tenure of Office" act, which 
required its assent to their removal. 

The most important office at issue was that of Secre- 
tary of War. Edwin M. Stanton, who had held the office 
from early in Lincoln's first term, had been continued in 
the office by Johnson. The President requested Stanton 
to resign. The Secretary refused. Johnson appointed 
General Grant in Stanton's place, but he soon gave the 
office over to Stanton when Congress expressed its opinion 
of the matter, for Grant stood with Congress in its policy 
of reconstruction. For over two years, the relations between 
Congress and the President had been strained. He was an 
irritable and irritating man, and in 1867 committed the 
blunder of making a tour of the country, during which, in 
violent speeches, he publicly attacked Congress. When, 
therefore, he appointed General Thomas to succeed Grant 
as Secretary of War, he seemed, to Congress, to have com- 
mitted such "high crimes and misdemeanors" as war- 
ranted his impeachment. The impeachment trial began 
in the Senate March 5, and ended May 26, 1868. The 
articles of impeachment were eleven. A test vote on 
the eleventh article, on the President's speeches against 
Congress, stood thirty-five to nineteen. The court of 
impeachment adjourned and the trial was dropped. The 
President had been impeached, but not convicted. 

While the impeachment of the President was drawing 



472 RECONSTRUCTION [1868 

to a close, the Republicans met in convention at Chicago, 
and nominated General Grant, of Illinois, for President, 
and Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, for Vice-President. The 
principles of the platform were equal suffrage to all loyal 
citizens, the payment of the public debt "according to the 
spirit of the laws under which it was contracted," the rights 
of expatriation, as against the old maxim, "Once an Eng- 
lishman, always an Englishman," the care of the widows 
and orphans of the soldiers and sailors who died in the war, 
and the encouragement of foreign immigpation. 

The Democratic convention met in New York in July, 
and nominated Horatio Seymour, governor of New York, 
and Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri. The platform 
demanded the restoration of all the states to their rights in 
the Union; amnesty for past political offenses; the regu- 
lation of the elective franchise by the states themselves; 
the repeal of all reconstruction acts of Congress "as usur- 
pations and unconstitutional," the taxation of government 
bonds and other public securities, and finally, "One cur- 
rency for the government and the people, the laborer and 
the office-holder, the pensioner and the soldier, the pro- 
ducer and the bond-holder." 

Nebraska, the thirty-seventh state, had been admitted 
March I, 1867. Thirty-four states voted. Grant and Col- 
fax received 214 electoral votes and 3,015,071 popular 
votes; Seymour and Blair, 2,709,613 popular and 80 elec- 
toral votes. Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas did not vote. 
Grant was inaugurated March 4, 1869. 

Disturbances of a terrible character now broke out in 
various parts of the South. Reconstruction, as carried 
on there by Congress, rigidly excluded from any share in 
the government of the South every man who had borne a 
conspicuous part in the late Confederacy. This practically 
excluded every intelligent white man and turned the con- 
trol of affairs over to the negroes. In South Carolina and 
Mississippi they outnumbered the whites; in North Caro- 
lina and Alabama they were about equal in number with 
them. Many northern men remained south after the war, 
and went into politics; many went there then for that pur- 
pose. These proclaimed themselves the friends of the 



1869-1870] AMENDMENT XV 473 

negroes, and organized them into a political following. 
The effect was "negro rule" and "carpet bag rule." All 
over the South this was not only resented, but was attacked 
with violence. The whites of the South organized secret 
societies, known by various names, as "The Invisible 
Empire," "The Caucasians," "The Ku-Klux-Klan," 
"The Knights of the White Camellia," which attempted 
to do by violence what they were prevented from doing by 
law; that is, to control the negroes by a reign of terror. 
This period, which in many of its terrible details surpassed 
the darkest ages of history, lasted about seven years. 

Congress discovered that the Fourteenth Amendment 
did not go far enough. The negro must be secure in the 
right to vote. Therefore, the Fifteenth Amendment, 
passed by Congress February 27, 1869, was submitted to 
the states, was ratified, and duly proclaimed March 30, 
1870. In carrying this amendment into effect. Congress 
passed several acts designed to suppress lawless organiza- 
tions in the South. But these were difficult to reach. 
Before they were broken up, thousands of men, white and 
black, lost their lives by violence. Southern men believed 
that the negro was not fit to become a voter. For two 
centuries and a half he had been a slave in America, and 
for untold ages had been a slave in Europe, Asia, and 
Africa. That suddenly he should be made a voter and a 
lawmaker seemed intolerable to his former masters. 
Northern men believed that negro suffrage would solve the 
race problem. If the negro voted, he would be respected. 
The race war in the South was the result. 

One of the great problems left by the war was the 
management and payment of the national debt. On the 
1st of July, 1866, the national debt was $2,773,000,000, 
of which $1,121,000,000 was in bonds, and the remainder 
in treasury notes, fractional currency, and national bank 
notes. The debt, in brief, was in national bonds and in 
"paper money." The bonds bore from five to seven per 
cent interest. The great question was, how to reduce the 
debt and get back to specie payments, as paper money had 
quite driven coin from circulation. 

In 1863, Congress created the national banking system. 



474 RECONSTRUCTION [1869-1872 

practically under the care of the Comptroller of the Currency. 
He should authorize the establishment of national banks, 
each of which should be subject to his inspection. The 
purpose of these banks was to make a market for United 
States bonds, by requiring the banks to buy them at least 
to the amount of one-third of their capital; to create a 
national currency by empowering the banks to issue notes 
up to ninety per cent of their government bonds, and to 
enlist the capital of the country on the side of the govern- 
ment, by identifying the prosperity of the banks with that 
of the government. 

The state banks were allowed to continue, but a tax of 
ten per cent was laid on their issues; so they ceased to be 
banks of issue and many became national banks. 

The whole question of our public finance became a party 
question soon after the war, and continues so to this day. 
The United States bonds outstanding down to 1872 bore 
a high rate of interest. If they could be exchanged for 
bonds at a lower rate, millions of dollars in interest would 
be saved to the people. By the close of 1872, these bonds 
had been paid to the amount of over five hundred million 
dollars. The government also reduced the amount of 
treasury notes nearly one billion dollars by the time Grant 
was inaugurated. But this was done by actually destroying 
the notes, at the Treasury Department, as they came in. 
The effect was to take one billion dollars out of circulation. 
A great protest went up, especially from the West, and 
Congress ordered that three hundred and fifty-six million 
dollars in treasury notes should be left in circulation. 

Many plans of currency reform were now agitated. 
The credit of the United States was high. Its bonds were 
at a premium, and many were held in Europe as invest- 
ments. Their interest was payable in coin. The law did 
not say in what the principal should be paid. Why not 
pay them in treasury notes? This would pay the principal 
and stop all interest. Congress, fearing that payment of 
the principal of the bonds in treasury notes would injure the 
credit of the country, passed an act in March, 1863, declar- 
ing that the principal, as well as the interest, should be paid 
in coin. During the war, gold was at a premium. On the 



i87i] ALABAMA CLAIMS 475 

1st of July, 1864, it took two dollars and forty-five cents in 
paper money to buy one dollar in gold. In 1868, the price 
fell to one dollar and thirty-five cents. United States 
bonds were not taxed and their interest was paid in gold. 
Vast quantities of these bonds were held by national banks, 
corporations, and individuals. The Democratic party, in 
1868, had demanded that the banks be taxed. Demands 
were made, toward the close of Grant's term, that the 
national banks be abolished and that treasury notes be 
made money and a legal tender for all debts. 

In 1 87 1, a new treaty with England was signed. The 
question arose. What of the losses to American commerce 
caused by the depredations by the Confederate cruisers, 
the Alabama, the Florida, the Shenandoah, the Tallahassee, 
and others, built in England, largely manned by English 
sailors, and at times, to decoy our ships, carrying the Eng- 
lish flag? It was agreed to leave this question to arbitra- 
tion. Several other highly important questions were 
pending between the two countries — as the Northwest 
boundary, the conditions of trade between the United 
States and Canada, and the fisheries. It was decided at 
Washington, in May, 1871, by a joint commission appointed 
by the two countries, that a tribunal of arbitration of five 
members should be appointed, one by England, one by the 
United States, and one each by the king of Italy, the presi- 
dent of Switzerland, and the emperor of Brazil. On the 
15th of December, 1871, the tribunal met in Geneva, Swit- 
zerland. The United States representative was Charles 
Francis Adams, our minister to England during the war, 
and he had the assistance of three eminent lawyers, Caleb 
Gushing, William M. Evarts, and Morrison R. Waite, 
afterward chief justice of the United States. The tribunal 
awarded fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars to 
the United States for damages received. Great as was the 
award, the adoption of arbitration in settling international 
disputes was far greater. The adoption of the principle 
was one of the great acts of Grant's administration. 

Differing opinions of reconstruction and of the currency 
caused a reorganization of parties in 1872. Agitation of 
the labor question and of prohibition interested many 



476 RECONSTRUCTION [1872 

people, and these organized political parties. In Febru- 
ary, the Labor Reform party met in convention at Colum- 
bus, Ohio, and nominated David Davis, of Illinois, and 
Joel Parker, of New Jersey. These declined the nomina- 
tion, and the party later indorsed Charles O'Conor and 
John Quincy Adams, grandson of the President of that 
name. But the platform of the new party showed that a 
new set of issues had come up. The labor question was 
now before the country. The platform demanded that the 
government should provide "a purely national circulating 
medium based on the faith and resources of the nation, 
issued directly to the people without intervention of any 
system of banking corporations, which money shall be a 
legal tender in the payment of all debts" ; that the public 
lands should be granted only in amounts of not more than 
one hundred and sixty acres to each settler. The tariff 
revenue should be derived mainly from articles of luxury. 
Chinese labor should be excluded. Contract labor in 
prisons and reformatories should be abolished. The civil 
service should be reformed, and a policy of general am- 
nesty toward the South should be provided by the United 
States. 

At the same time the Prohibition party held a conven- 
tion in Columbus, and nominated James Black, of Pennsyl- 
vania, and John Russell, of Michigan. In addition to a 
demand for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of 
intoxicating liquors, the party advocated cheap postage and 
cheaper railroad, steamboat, and telegraph rates than pre- 
vailed ; the extension of the suffrage to women, and encour- 
agement to foreign immigration. 

In May, the Liberal Republicans, who disapproved of 
much in General Grant's administration, and favored a more 
liberal policy toward the South, met in Convention, in Cin- 
cinnati, and nominated Horace Greeley, of New York, and 
B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri. A strong Liberal Republican 
movement had been winning votes in state elections in 
Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New 
York, and Massachusetts, so that the leaders, as is usual in 
splits of this kind, thought a national ticket should be put 
in the field. The party stood for universal amnesty, civil 



1871-1872J PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 477 

service reform, a return to specie payments, and the cessa- 
tion of grants of land to railroads. 

In June, at Baltimore, the Democratic party indorsed 
Greeley and Brown, and the Liberal Republican platform. 
But a split occurred in the convention, which refused to 
support the ticket. A convention at Louisville, Kentucky, 
which claimed to represent the "straight-out Democrats, 
named Charles O'Conor, of New York, and John Quincy 
Adams, of Massachusetts, but these declined the nomina- 
tion. 

The Republicans met at Philadelphia in June, renomi- 
nated Grant, and named Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, 
for Vice-President. The platform approved the general 
policy of the preceding eleven years, and advocated the 
speedy resumption of specie payments, the encouragement 
and restoration of American commerce and ship-building; 
cheaper postage, and the maintenance of pensions for all 
soldiers and sailors disabled while on duty during the war. 

Here was a variety of platforms, indicating, in the 
aggregate, the public issues of the times. They show that 
the war issues were past, and that new questions, chiefly 
of an industrial nature, had sprung up. 

Grant and Wilson received 286 electoral votes and 
3,597,070 popular votes; Greeley and Brown received 
2,834,079 popular votes, but before the electoral vote was 
counted, Greeley died. The electoral vote was much scat- 
tered. Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, received 42 
votes. The Phohibition vote was 5,608; the Labor part}' 
vote, 29,489. The freedman voted for the first time for a 
President. For the first time since i860 all the states, now 
numbering thirty-seven, voted. Grant was inaugurated 
for the second time, March 4, 1873. 

Hardly had the second administration of Grant begun 
before signs of a financial crash, all over the country, 
appeared. For ten years people had been extending the 
credit system further and further. Imports exceeded ex- 
ports in 1872 by more than sixty-three million dollars, 
and the balance of trade against this country had to be paid 
in gold. Nearly every town in the Union was in debt, 
having issued bonds to assist in railroad construction, or 



47S RECONSTRUCTION [1S74-1S75 

in manufactures, or in costly improvements. From 1868 
to 1873, over five billion dollars were expended in railroad 
construction. The West was constantly demanding capital, 
and vast enterprises in mining, manufacturing, and building 
promised large profits. The export of gold steadily con- 
tinued. Greenbacks were hoarded. 

The government sought to relieve the contraction by 
selling bonds, but this tended to increase public alarm. A 
general panic prevailed, and culminated September 20, 
when for ten days the New York clearing-house suspended. 
The bonds of the United States fell but little, but railroad 
securities fell from ten to forty per cent. Ever\-body was 
involved in the general depression and loss. Failures were 
reported ever\-where. There were over five thousand in 

1873. "Hard times," like those of 1837, had come again, 
and largely for the same reasons — speculation, the abuse 
of credit, and extravagant living. 

To help check the panic, the government issued twent\- 
six million dollars in greenbacks, so that the total amount 
of treasury notes in circulation July i, 1874. was three 
hundred and eighty-two million dollars. A crj' went up 
for more greenbacks. If Congress would only issue, say, 
twenty million dollars more, the panic would be stayed and 
"good times" would return. In April, Congress passed 
the "inflation bill," increasing the issue to four hundred 
million dollars, but Grant vetoed it. He thought that there 
was enough paper money in circulation, and that more 
would weaken the credit of the country. Many now con- 
sider this his greatest act as President. But the veto did 
not settle the currency question. The public debt. July i. 

1874, was two billion two hundred and fifty million dol- 
lars. 

On the 14th of January, 1875, Congress passed the bill 
for the resumption of specie payments. The United 
States would coin silver coin of the denominations of ten. 
twenty-five and fifty cents, and issue them to redeem all 
the fractional paper scrip of the same denominations. The 
exchange should be made at its mints, at the post-offices, 
and at the public depositaries of the country. Gold bullion 
should henceforth be coined free of charge. United States 



I 



1876] PARTY NOMINATIONS 479 

notes in excess of throe hundred miUion dollars should be 
redeemed. The national banks were authorized to increase 
their circulation and for every one hundred dollars in national 
bank notes they put out, the Secretary of the Treasury 
called in and destroyed eighty dollars in treasury notes, 
and after January i, 1879, ^^^^ Secretary should redeem all 
treasury notes in coin, on demand. 

As soon as this act passed — and many people were 
already beginning to believe that a treasury note was as 
good as a gold dollar — the value of the notes steadily rose, 
and the price of gold as steadily fell. 

Currency, labor, the civil service, and "reforms" of 
various kinds were the issues in 1S76. The Prohibitionists 
met in Cleveland in May, nominated Green C. Smith, of 
Kentucky, and G. T. Stewart, of Ohio. In addition to 
their demand for legislation forbidding the manufacture and 
sale of liquors, they demanded the suppression of lotteries, 
and the denial of the use of the mails by lottery and gam- 
bling concerns; the abolition of polygamy; compulsory 
school laws; the free use of the Bible in the schools; the 
settlement of international disputes by arbitration, and the 
direct and exclusive issue by the government of paper 
money as good as gold. 

On the same day, the Greenback party met at Indian- 
apolis, and nominated Peter Cooper, of New York, and 
Samuel F. Cary, of Ohio, on a platform demanding the 
repeal of the resumption act of January- 14, 1875, and the 
direct issue by the government of United States notes, con- 
vertible on demand into United States securities, bearing 
interest not exceeding one cent a day on each one hundred 
dollars and a legal tender for all debts. No more gold 
bonds should be issued for foreign markets, but all bonds 
should be offered directly to the American people at not 
more than 3.65 per cent a year. 

The Republicans assembled in Cincinnati in June, and 
proclaimed in their platform that the United States is a 
nation, not a league of states. Specie should be resumed 
according to the act of 1875. No school funds should be 
applied for the benefit of sectarian schools. Polygamy 
should be extirpated, and civil service reform should be 



4So RECONSTRUCTION [1876 

promoted. They nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, of 
Ohio, and William A. Wheeler, of Xew York. 

In June, at St. Louis. Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, 
and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, were nominated by 
the Democratic party. The platform was a vigorous 
demand for "reform" in every branch of the government, 
and especially in expenditures, in national administration 
in the South, in the tariff, in taxation, and in the "profli- 
gate waste of the public lands." 

The Union now consisted of thirty-eight states, by the 
admission of Colorado. August 1. 1S76. This increased 
the electoral vote to 369. The result was doubtful in Ore- 
gon, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. If these 
were Democratic, Tilden and Hendricks would be elected, 
receiving 185 votes; if they were Republican. Hayes and 
Wheeler would receive 185 votes. In either case, the 
defeated candidates would fail by only one vote. In each 
of the doubtful states there were two sets of returns, one 
for Tilden and Hendricks, one for Hayes and Wheeler. 
Which set should be counted? Never had such a case 
occurred before. Congress must decide. Instead of itself 
voting on the returns. Congress appointed a commission to 
decide which set of returns should be counted. It con- 
sisted of five Senators, five Representatives, and five jus- 
tices of the Supreme Court, as follows: 

Republicans. Democrats. 

Five Senators, chosen by the Senate 3 2 

Five Representatives, chosen by the House. . 2 3 

Four justices, chosen by Congress 2 2 

One justice, chosen by the four justices al- 
ready selected i 

Thus the commission stood 8 7 

Its decision was to be final unless reversed by consent 
of both branches of Congress. It found the disputed 
returns to be for Hayes and Wheeler, and both branches 
of Congress would not consent to reverse this decision. 
When the electoral votes were counted by Congress, March 
2, 1877, Hayes and Wheeler were declared to have 185. 
Tilden and Hendricks. 184. The popular vote stood, for 
Tilden and Hendricks, 4,284.757; for Hayes and Wheeler, 



1S77] INAUGURATION OF R. B. HAVES 4S1 

4.033.950. Peter Cooper received 81,740, and Green C. 
Smith. 9.522. The Senate was Republican, the House 
Democratic. Great excitement prevailed all over the 
countiy. Probably in any other, civil war would have 
broken out. The 4th of Alarch fell on Sunday. The new 
President took the oath, privately at the White House, on 
the 4th. in the presence of General Grant and Hamilton 
Fish, Secretary of State. On the 5th he took it again, at 
the public inauguration. It was administered by the chief 
justice of the Supreme Court, ^Morrison R. Waite. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 
1S65-1900 

The eighteenth-centun,' state constitutions, and those 
made down to the opening;- of the war. were mostly silent 
concerning the relation of the states to the national gov- 
ernment. This silence was broken after 1S60. All the 
southern constitutions, formed during reconstruction times, 
and later, have acknowledged the paramount authority of 
the national government and the paramount allegiance of 
every citizen to it.* The right to secede, which never was 
claimed under a state constitution, was now distinctly dis- 
claimed by those of the South, and the common language 
employed was that the state should "ever remain a mem- 
ber of the American Union." 

The ordinances of secession were repudiated, and all 
debts and liabilities incurred in aid of the rebellion were 
declared void. During the war. the legislatures of the 
insurrectionary states assembled under their existing con- 
stitutions, which by amendment were made to recognize 
the authority of the Southern Confederacy. They enacted 
many laws, of which all that were solely to promote the 
good order and well-being of society, and which were made 
by a lawfully organized government, were later deemed 
valid, t and were recognized in the southern constitutions 
adopted in 1865 and 186S. The restoration constitutions 
of 1865-66 excluded the African race from the basis of 
representation, and largely for that reason were rejected 
by Congress. Those adopted in 1867 and 1868. the recon- 
struction constitutions, included the negroes in the basis of 
representation, recognized them as citizens, and gave them 

* There is one exception, the South Caa>lina constitution of 1S95. 
t Reynolds vs. Taylor, 43 Alabama. 4J0; Wallace t'j\ The State, 33 
Texas. 445. 



1S63-1900] NEW TRO VISIONS 4S3 

the right to vote and to hold office. These constitutions 
uniformly excluded from office all persons who were ex- 
cluded by the reconstruction acts, and their administrative 
provisions retlected the spirit and purpose of those acts. 

The provisions common to the bills of rights adopted in 
the eighteenth century, and down to i860, were repeated 
in the constitutions adopted later. There were, however, 
some new and highly significant clauses added. Maryland, 
in the eighteenth centur}-. had pronounced against monopo- 
lies, and by 1870 seven states had followed her lead.* 
Religious tests for office were imiforml\- forbidden, and a 
liberal provision was made for the administration of oaths 
in such manner as would be most binding upon the con- 
science. Religious freedom was everywhere emphasized. 
An apprehension that gifts for religious purposes might en- 
danger the state led Missouri to require the prior consent 
of the legislature. Appropriations of public money for 
sectarian purposes were forbidden. Aliens were freely 
declared capable of enjoying the property rights of 
natives, but the privilege was not granted on the Pacific 
coast to Chinamen. Slavery was prohibited and the equal 
rights of the colored race carefully defined. 

Some provisions of a new type were introduced into the 
bills of rights, forbidding, or restricting, the sale of intoxi- 
cating liquors, t regulating public health and quarantine, 
and protecting the interests of new industrial groups, such 
as minors and married women, the latter, after 1850, being 
by law gradually suffered to exercise the rights of property 
as single women. The rapid settlement of the West led to 
the insertion of a provision protecting the homestead and 
exempting it from all claims of debt, the ostensible purpose 
being the protection of the widows and children. Exemp- 
tion laws had run a course of great popularity throughout 
the western states, and their substance was incorporated in 
the constitutions of most of them. Not infrequently the 
amount of exemption was explicitly stated in the constitu- 
tion. 

* Xevada, Califoniia, Illinois, North Carolina, \'ermout. Tennessee 
and Texas. 

■f Michigan, Texas, and West \'irginia. 



4S4 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [1865-1900 

The three functions of government familiar to our 
earlier constitutions were now increased by the gradual 
recognition of a fourth, the administrative, which in some 
of the constitutions of the northwestern states, admitted in 
1889 and 1890, was elaborated into an article. 

The great change in the basis of representation was the 
obliteration of all discrimination against the black race; and 
applied equally North and South. The single-district sys- 
tem, introduced by Michigan in 1850, was received with 
widespread approval, and in consequence the problem of 
the apportionment of representation was simplified more 
satisfactorily than in earlier times. The means of its solu- 
tion were improved by the uniform provision for a state 
census, which usually occurred five years after the census 
taken by the United States.* 

The qualifications for membership in the lower house 
were less restrictive than in earlier times. The candidate 
was required to be an elector, which signified that he was 
a citizen of the United States, and of the state in which he 
resided. The qualification of age remained unchanged. 
A longer period of residence, which was usually from five 
to seven years, instead of one or two, and greater age, as 
twenty-five or thirty years, instead of twenty-one, were 
required of the candidate for the upper house. Long 
before the war, the people realized the evils of over-legis- 
lation, and began to check them by changing the sessions 
of the legislature from annual to biennial. The change was 
effected everywhere in the country, except in New Eng- 
land, and before the century closed the usual term of a 
member of the lower house was two years, and of the 
upper, four. The annual salaries of senators and mem- 
bers of the house were usually the same. 

A further effort of the people to prevent legislative 
evils was the gradual adoption of a time limit for the regu- 
lar sessions. This was effected by an explicit enumeration 
of the number of days beyond which the legislature should 
receive no pay for its services, and a similar limitation was 
prescribed for extra sessions. In most of the states the 
colonial term "general assembly" continued to be the 

*I.e., 1865, 1875, 1885, etc. 



1889-1890] THE LEGISLATIVE 485 

official designation of the state legislature as a bicameral 
body. With a more perfect system of apportionment, the 
people gradually limited the membership of each house. 
The ratio of the house and of the senate was usually two 
or three to one. Few state senates consisted of more than 
fifty members, and the usual number was about thirty-five. 
The principle regulating the membership was the same as 
that followed by Congress, namely, to secure a working 
legislative body, neither too large nor too small. 

A state, in its first constitution, usually prescribes the 
number of members for each house, but leaves the later 
membership to be regulated by population. In no state 
was the pay of members great. It seldom exceeded three 
dollars a day, and in some states was limited to from one 
hundred to five hundred dollars for the session. Extra ses- 
sions were discouraged, and substantially, by the provision 
that the pay of members should be only one-half as great 
as at regular sessions. Mileage was usually fixed by law, 
and rarely exceeded ten cents per mile. 

The article on the legislative department was the first 
to become long and elaborate. This was due to the incor- 
poration of the substance of many laws, and of rules of the 
two houses; thus, the clauses against bribery were taken 
from the statutes on the subject, and the rules of procedure 
from the house and senate manuals. All the constitutions 
in their legislative provisions reflected the national instru- 
ment, and new states commonly used its language. The 
provision against special legislation, and for the purpose of 
compelling the general assembly to enact laws, multiplied 
on every hand. The war on special legislation raged all 
through the last forty years of the century, and culminated 
in a multitude of provisions on the subject in the consti- 
tutions adopted in the Northwest in 1889 and 1890. The 
purpose was obvious; to safeguard the state treasury, to 
secure uniform and general legislation, and to avoid the 
costly confusion into which the states, during their earlier 
history, had been thrown by the enactment of innumerable 
private acts and special laws. A further means of safety 
forbade the introduction of bills into either house during 
the last few days of the session. 



4S6 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [1865-1900 

The multiplication of laws became so great that in both 
old and new states there was a movement to provide for 
their codification, in which the state of New York, under 
the influence of David Dudley Field, took the lead. The 
obligations imposed upon the legislatures were like those 
imposed between 1830 and 1850, namely, to found and 
maintain systems of education free for all persons of school 
age, and to establish a sinking fund. 

At the same time that the people were putting restric- 
tions upon the legislature, they vested larger powers in the 
executive. The distrust of governors, characteristic of 
colonial times, quite passed away. The executive was 
given a longer term, a higher salary, and larger powers. 
The principal reform consisted in vesting him with author- 
ity to veto any item in an appropriation bill; a typical 
provision on each subject was made by Pennsylvania in 
1873. Usually the governor's salary was fixed by law, but 
some states prescribed the amount in the constitution. 
With few exceptions, governors were inaugurated in Janu- 
ary. The people guarded themselves against executive 
usurpation by continuing the reform established in the 
eighteenth-century constitutions, that the governor should 
not be eligible a second time, or, if re-eligible, not until a 
period of three or four years had elapsed. Almost without 
exception the governor was required to be a citizen of the 
United States and to possess the qualifications of an elec- 
tor; but some states, notably Maine and Louisiana, required 
him to be a native-born citizen. 

The unparalleled progress of the country in material 
wealth and industrial enterprises led to much legislation of 
an administrative type, and compelled at least an attempt 
at an adequate administrative service. In consequence a 
vast body of ofifice-holders was called into existence, antl 
the tendency was to give their appointment to the governor, 
subject to the approval of the senate; thus the executive 
became a mighty man in the state, and not infrequently an 
essential part of the political machine. 

A change, supposed by its advocates to be a reform, 
was introduced affecting the pardoning power. The public 
soon learned that governors were the creatures of politics, 



1865-1900] THE JUDICIARY 487 

and for this reason took away from them much of their 
power of appointment and of pardoning offenders. The 
first resulted in the substitution of the elective for the 
appointive system, and the second in the organization of 
boards of pardon. It may well be questioned whether 
these boards have not done far more evil than good. In 
too many cases they have proved to be a premium on 
crime. Whatever the criminal's offense, he is encouraged 
to look forward to many avenues of escape. The jury may 
disagree; the judge may falter; and last, but not least of 
all, the board of pardons may take favorable action. But 
the exercise of the pardoning power, which at best is very 
difficult to place, remains in some states with the governor, 
who may be a great politician ; and in others with a board 
of pardons which, by reason of its plurality, is a more or 
less irresponsible body; meanwhile crime increases. 

The great change in the judiciary was from the appoint- 
ive to the elective system. It was discussed many years 
before it was effected, but after 1876 the elective system 
may be said to have been popularly recognized to be the 
only one in harmony with the democratic idea. The num- 
ber of courts was greatly increased incident to the necessi- 
ties of the people. The old English nisi prius system quite 
disappeared. Every state was subdivided into judicial dis- 
tricts, many of which, as time went on and business 
increased, were again subdivided. The adoption of the 
elective system resulted in short terms and frequent changes 
on the bench. The twenty-one-year term for Supreme 
Court judges in Pennsylvania amounted practically to a life 
tenure, but excepting in New York, in which the term was 
fourteen years, the Pennsylvania model was not followed. 
The usual term for a justice of the Supreme Court was seven 
years. Judicial salaries were small, and together with the 
short term greatly affected the character of the state judi- 
ciary. Undoubtedly the conserving influence of the federal 
judicial system tended to keep up the character of the state 
judiciary. Had it been possible to abolish the life tenure 
of the national judges, it would have been done early in 
our history; indeed, as early as Jefferson's first term. The 
qualifications of judges were usually ample to secure useful 



488 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [i 865-1900 

men. In most states a candidate for the bench was required 
to be learned in law, and to have practiced his profession for a 
number of years. Men rarely were elected before they 
reached middle life, though the legal age was seldom less 
than thirty years. The qualifications of citizenship and 
residence were usually the same as for state senators or 
governors. 

The change from the appointive to the elective system 
included the entire machinery of the courts; thus the 
attorney-general, the prosecuting attorney, the clerk, and 
the minor of^cers about the court-house were elected by 
the people. The change also included most of the admin- 
istrative ofificers of 'the state, such as its secretary, its 
auditors, its treasurer, and the members of its important 
commissions. 

Until 1868, the state elections usually occurred in No- 
vember, on the day on which members of Congress and 
presidential electors were chosen. But the people soon 
discovered, as they thought, that many evils followed this 
synchronism. A reform was introduced by which, as the 
constitutions and laws provided, local elections were made 
to occur on a different day, so that municipal and county 
interest might not be ignored in the excitement of a national 
campaign. This reform was exemplified in the provisions 
on the subject in the constitution of New York of 1894. 

In 1790, less than one-thirtieth of the population lived 
in cities; in i860, it was one-sixth; but in 1900, one-third 
of the whole, that is nearly twenty-five millions of people, 
lived in cities of eight thousand people and more. This 
astonishing change in residence affected the laws and con- 
stitutions of the states, as seen, after 1870, in the attempt 
to balance urban and rural interests; but the result in New 
York and Pennsylvania was a discrimination in representa- 
tion in favor of the rural districts. 

The rapid increase in urban population outran all pro- 
visions for municipal government such as were familiar to 
the people in the middle of the century. In consequence 
the problem of city government became one of the most 
difflcult before the people, and the century approached its 
close with the problem imperfectly solved. Very little was 



1865-1900] SCHOOL LANDS 4S9 

said in the state constitutions touching city government. 
Although, after i860, the states old and new adopted fifty- 
four constitutions, it is doubtful whether in the aggregate 
as many lines can be found in them respecting city govern- 
ment. The whole subject was left to the legislatures, which 
it was expected would confer suitable charters for the gov- 
ernment of cities. These charters usually were little con- 
stitutions modeled after the state or national type, creating 
a municipal executive, legislative, judicial, and administra- 
tive, and putting the control of city affairs into the hands 
of the majority of the voters. After 1870, the constitu- 
tions quite uniformly required the registration of voters, 
and, more carefully than before, provided for their protec- 
tion. 

A foreigner, taking up a collection of the constitutions 
in force in i860, and another collection of those in force in 
1900, would doubtless pronounce that the principal differ- 
ences between them were to be found in the provisions on 
public education. This difference he would find conspicu- 
ous in the constitutions of the western states. At the time 
of their admission into the Union they were all presented 
with grants of land equal, in every instance, to one-sixteenth 
of the area of the state, and in many instances an additional 
grant of one-thirty-sixth of its area was made for particular 
educational purposes. The imperial domain thus given by 
Congress for the support of education has been nearly as 
great as the entire area of the original thirteen states. In 
the state of Washington alone, admitted in 1889, the grant 
of land for school purposes, computed at the value of ten 
dollars per acre, amounted to more than one hundred and 
thirty million dollars. The gift of so vast a treasure neces- 
sarily compelled some adequate provision for its care, and 
the western states in response provided in their constitu- 
tions for most liberal educational privileges, free to all per- 
sons of school age, and graded from the primary school to 
the state university. Never before in the history of the 
world was so munificient a provision made for public edu- 
cation. The older states were included in the gift by an 
apportionment of land scrip which they converted into 
school funds. The constitution and laws of Michigan are, 



490 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [1865-1900 

perhaps, the best type of the attempt which the people 
have made to utilize their educational privileges. The 
provision for schools was accompanied, in many states, by 
others for free public libraries. 

Another striking difference which an observing person 
would note in constitutions formed before and after the 
war is the generous provisions in the later instruments for 
charitable institutions of all kinds founded and maintained 
at public expense. These increased to so great a number 
that, it may be said, the criminal and unfortunate classes 
were in many instances better cared for than any other 
members of the community. 

The reform inaugurated by New York, in 1846, by 
which corporations were brought within the control of the 
legislature, for the purpose of securing the public against 
loss, began a new era. It at first took the form of hostility 
to irresponsible state banks and private banking concerns, 
and was quickly reflected in the constitutions and laws. 
But after the establishment of the national banking system, 
in 1863, and particulary after the decisions in the legal- 
tender cases, culminating twenty years later, fewer provis- 
ions were introduced into the constitutions and fewer laws 
were passed respecting state banks. The reform took a 
new and wider range in an article in the constitutions not 
infrequently entitled "corporations other than municipal." 
In the western states public sentiment was hostile to such 
corporations, as was exemplified in the constitutions of the 
northwestern states admitted after 1889. One might con- 
clude from a perusal of them, that these states were in the 
grasp of powerful monopoly from which each was struggling 
to get free. Public carriers, insurance companies, and 
industrial corporations were the special objects of attack. 
The feeling of the people toward monopolies was shown in 
the constitution of Wyoming of 1889, whose bill of rights 
declares that "perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to 
the genius of a free state, and shall not be allowed"; and 
that "corporations are the creatures of the state, endowed 
for public good with a portion of its sovereign powers, and 
must, therefore, be subject to its control." Nor was the 
laboring-man forgotten. This same constitution un- 



1865-1900] THE SOUTH 491 

doubtedly reflected widespread public opinion at the time 
in declaring that "the rights of labor shall have just pro- 
tection through laws calculated to secure to the laborer a 
proper reward for his services and to promote the industrial 
welfare of the state." The industrial unrest at the close 
of the century dictated these provisions, which undoubtedly 
are only a sign of the future. 

The states which had formed the Southern Confederacy 
were subject more or less to the military power of the 
national government from 1865 till 1877 when the federal 
troops were withdrawn from them. During these twelve 
years the control of their public affairs was chiefly in the 
hands of negroes and a few whites, of which latter class 
many had migrated to the South from the North after the 
war. The period was one of incessant conflict between 
the intelligent white men who were natives of the South 
and the other two classes. Gradually the control of public 
affairs came again into the hands of southern white men, 
who, as soon as the federal troops were removed, proceeded 
to reorganize the state governments under new constitu- 
tions. These were framed in accordance with the letter of 
the national Constitution, and were administered by whites 
with the avowed purpose of retaining the control of public 
affairs in their own hands. They believed that the negro 
had been thrust into the privileges of the elector and office- 
holder too soon, either for his own or the public welfare. 
But in several states, especially in the black belt, the negroes 
far outnumbered the whites, and if well organized, might 
easily have controlled state and local government. After ex- 
hausting every apparently practicable means, many of which 
were questionable, for retaining the control of the govern- 
ment, the better class of whites united in amending the 
constitution and laws in Mississippi, South Carolina, and 
Louisiana so as to secure the results for which they had so 
long been struggling. 

The Mississippi convention of 1890 framed and promul- 
gated a constitution on the 1st of November of that year.* 

*See the journal of its proceedings, August 12-November i, 1890, 
Jackson, Mississippi; its debates were reported in the Clarion- Ledger, 
published at Jackson. 



492 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [1865-1900 

It denied the right of the state to withdraw from the federal 
Union for any reason, and declared that the paramount 
allegiance of its citizens was due to the United States, It 
forbade slavery, and also religious tests for offices. This 
recognition of the changes wrought during the preceding 
thirty years was made while yet the President of the 
Southern Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, the most distin- 
guished resident and native of Mississippi, was living. 

The great question before the convention was the suf- 
frage, and especially negro suffrage. It was openly ac- 
knowledged that the terrorization so long practiced by the 
white upon the black race, to exclude it from the polls, had 
failed.* As a solution of a difficult problem, an article on 
the franchise was adopted which began a new era at the 
South. It gave the right to vote to male inhabitants of 
the state who paid taxes, who were lawfully registered, 
but after the 1st of January, 1892, to those electors only 
who had paid a poll-tax, and who were able to read any 
section of the state constitution, or who should be able 
"to understand the same when read to him, or give a 
reasonable interpretation thereof." The provision threw 
the control of the elections into the hands of the election 
officers, and thus into the hands of a political party. 

A test of the constitutionality of the qualifications was 
soon made.f It was claimed that the changes made by 
the constitution in the basis of the suffrage violated the act 
of Congress of 1870, by which the state had been readmit- 
ted into the Union, and further, that the constitutional 
convention had no power to promulgate the instrument. 
The Supreme Court of the state rejected both propositions 
as unsound. It held that the constitutional convention was 
a sovereign body, possessing powers especially delegated to 
it by the whole electoral body of the commonwealth ; 
therefore, the claim that the constitution was of no effect 
because it had not been ratified by popular vote could not 
be sustained. The second claim was dismissed as having 
no foundation. The new constitution, as administered by 

*See remarks of Judge Calhoun, Clarion-Ledger, Auj^. 12 and Nov. 
I, 1890. 

fSproule vs. Fredericks, 6g Mississippi, 898 (1892). 



1895] NEGRO SUFFRAGE: SOUTH CAROLINA 493 

white men, practically put the whole body of negro voters 
at their control and insured the state against that which its 
white people most seriously feared, negro domination. 

The discovery of a method of dealing with the negro 
made by the people of Mississippi, was speedily utilized by 
South Carolina. On the loth of September, 1895, a con- 
vention assembled at Columbia, and adopted a new consti- 
tution.* The temporary chairman in calling the convention 
to order gave a brief history of public affairs in the state. 
The constitution of 1865, he said, had been made without 
authority; the convention which formed it having been no 
more than a mass-meeting of citizens. The convention 
of 1868, he said, "was the fruit of the notoriously uncon- 
stitutional reconstruction acts. Aliens, negroes, and native 
whites without character, all enemies of South Carolina, 
had made the constitution which was then adopted," It 
was designed, he said, "to degrade the state, insult its 
people, and overturn its civilization. "f For seventeen 
years the state had lived voluntarily under that instrument 
after the white race had acquired full control of every 
department of its government. The time had at last come 
when a new constitution, the work of the state, was to be 
adopted. The only valid constitution which the state had 
ever had, he continued, was that of 1790, which should 
be made the basis of the new work. The instrument which 
the convention ratified on the 4th of December, 1895, con- 
tained no recognition of the paramount authority of the 
national government or of the allegiance to it of citizens 
of the state. 

An elaborate article on the right of suffrage made clear 
the main purpose in calling the convention. The elector 
was required to have resided two years in the state and to 
be registered. Up to the ist of January, 1898, all male 
persons of voting age, applying for registration, who could 
read any section in the constitution submitted to them by 
the registration officer, or understand and explain it when 
read to them by him, should be entitled to register and 

*See its Journal, September lo-December 4, 1895; its debates were 
reported in the Charleston News mid Courier. 

I Journal, S. C. Constitutional Convention, 1895, P* 2. 



494 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [1878 

become electors. Any person who applied for registration 
after that date, if otherwise qualified, should be registered, 
provided he could both read and write any section of the 
constitution submitted to him by the registration of^cer, 
or could show that he owned and had paid taxes, collect- 
ible during the previous year, on property in the state, 
assessed at no less than three hundred dollars. The pos- 
session of an election certificate would be proof of the 
possession of these qualifications. It was believed that 
the article on the franchise, administered at it would be by 
white men, would exclude from the polls a large portion 
of the worst element among the negroes, and practically 
give the whites the control of the state. 

Louisiana was in much the same condition as Missis- 
sippi and South Carolina, and to make white supremacy 
permanent, a new constitution was adopted in 1898.* The 
South Carolina article on the franchise was favorably con- 
sidered, but was thought not to go far enough, and a more 
rigorous article was adopted. No equally elaborate provis- 
ion can be found in any other American constitution. The 
voter was required to be a male citizen of the state and of 
the United States, and a resident of Louisiana at least two 
years. He must be legally enrolled as a registered voter 
on his personal application. He must be able to read and 
write, and demonstrate his ability to do so when he applied 
for registration, and his application must be written either 
in the English language or in his mother tongue. If unable 
to read or write, he should be entitled to register and vote 
if he was the bona-fidc owner of property assessed at a value 
of not less than three hundred dollars, on which all taxes 
had been paid. 

No male person who, on or before January, 1867, was 
entitled to vote, and no son or grandson of such person 
not less than twenty-one years of age at the time of the 
adoption of the constitution; and no person of foreign birth 
who had been naturalized before the first of January, 1898, 
should be denied the right to register and vote because of 
his failure to possess the education or property qualifica- 

* See the Journal of the convention held at New Orleans, February 8- 
May 12, 1898; the debates were reported in the Daily Picayune. 



1898] NEGRO SUFFRAGE AGITATION 495 

tions. A complicated system of registration was adopted. 
In addition to the above qualifications, no person less than 
sixty years of age should be permitted to vote unless he 
had paid a poll-tax of one dollar a year, to be used exclu- 
sively in aid of public schools in the parish in which the tax 
was collected. 

Before being allowed to vote, every elector must exhibit 
his poll-tax receipts for two years to the commissioner of 
election. Any person who should pay the poll-tax of 
another, or advance him money for the purpose in order 
to influence his vote, was declared guilty of bribery, and 
could be punished accordingly. 

Unless a person was a registered voter, he could not 
vote at any primary or in a convention or political assembly 
held for the purpose of nominating a candidate for public 
office. In the political convention the apportionment of 
representation should be on the basis of population. The 
very technical character of the article and its many restric- 
tions, it was believed, would practically exclude a large 
portion of the negroes who hitherto had been allowed to 
vote. 

Meanwhile, an agitation for a like reform was begun in 
Maryland, North Carolina,* Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. 
The movement toward excluding negro citizens from the 
polls was based on the convictions of southern white men 
that unless restrictions of this kind or even more exacting 
were adopted, the control of public affairs in a large portion 
of the South would pass permanently into the hands of the 
negro race, which at the close of the century numbered 
nearly eleven millions in this portion of the Union. 

The extension of the elective suffrage to the former 
slave was the most striking change made in the civil affairs 
of the American people during the century. At its opening 
many white men were excluded from voting because of their 

* In 1896 the legislature of North Carolina submitted to its people a 
constitutional amendment similar to the Louisiana electoral provision. 
See a discussion of it in the United States Senate by John D. Morgan, 
Senator from Alabama, January 8, 1900 (Congressional Record, 713- 
718), and by Senator Pritchard, of North Carolina, post. Senator Mor- 
gan advanced the principal reasons for denying the negro the right to 
vote in the South. 



496 STATES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR [i 876-1 898 

poverty or religious opinions. The effort of the people of 
Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana to return to a 
limited suffrage was not the only one of its kind made by 
the American people toward the close of the century. The 
motive at the South was ostensibly to keep the control of 
public affairs in the hands of the intelligent whites. The 
motive in Colorado, 1876; Texas, 1879; Rhode Island, 
1888, and Utah, 1896, was to exclude from the polls all 
persons who were not taxpayers, when the issue was an 
increase of the public debt. In Rhode Island and Texas, 
the limitation applied to municipal elections, but Utah 
carried the limitation much further and gave the right to 
vote only to taxpayers, when an increase of indebtedness 
or the creation of a debt was the issue. A more detailed 
comparison of the constitutions and laws of the states made 
after i860 with those made before would show that the 
later instruments are more liberal and humane in character. 



I 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

INDUSTRIAL AND TERRITORIAL EXPANSION 
1876-1900 

At Philadelphia, on the lOth of May, 1876, the people 
of the United States celebrated the one hundredth year of 
their independence by opening an industrial exhibition, at 
which various interests of the nations of the earth were 
represented. It was an international festival of the best 
type. America entered upon her second century united 
and strengthened. The exhibition displayed the resources 
of our country, North, South, East, and West. 

President Hayes withdrew the national troops from 
Louisiana and South Carolina, and appointed as his Post- 
master-General an ex-Confederate officer. These things 
emphasized the fact that the national government wished 
to treat all sections of the Union alike and as its integral 
parts. The withdrawal of the troops from South Carolina 
and Louisiana meant the President recognized the Demo- 
cratic governor and legislature in each state as the lawful 
ones instead of the Republican claimants. 

The various party platforms in 1876 show that there was 
much diversity of opinion in the country regarding the 
currency. The laws in force in 1878 made all bonds, 
both principal and interest, and all treasury notes after 
January I, 1879, payable "in coin," and by coin many 
claimed gold only was meant. In February, 1873, an act 
was passed stopping the further coinage of silver dollars. 
Those already in circulation, and the minor silver coins, 
were declared not to be legal tender. Though used in 
ordinary business transactions, they would not be accepted 
in payment of custom duties, nor as interest on the public 
debt, nor in payment of the debt itself. In technical lan- 
guage, silver was "demonetized" in 1873. It was no 
longer a legal tender. 

497 



49S EXPANSION [1877-1878 

The House in 1877 was Democratic and most of its 
members had promised their constituents to vote for the 
"remonetization" of silver. In February, 1878, the Senate 
(Republican) and the House (Democratic) compromised 
their differences and passed, over the President's veto, the 
Bland Silver Bill, named after R. P. Bland, a Democrat 
from Missouri. The Bland bill originally proposed to coin 
silver dollars again, in the ratio of 16 to i — that is, one 
pound of gold to rate as sixteen pounds of silver; to make 
these dollars legal tender at their face value for every kind of 
debt, and to coin them for nothing — that is, just as gold bul- 
lion was coined, free of charge. Any one might bring silver 
to the mint and receive its bullion value in silver dollars. 

To this last proposition the Senate objected, as it would 
be the "free coinage of silver." Senator W. B. Allison, 
of Iowa, proposed, as a substitute, that there should be a 
limited free coinage of silver; the Secretary of the Treasury 
should be required to purchase each month not less than 
two million dollars, nor more than four million dollars' worth 
of silver bullion and coin it into dollars. These "Bland" 
dollars, as they were popularly called, weighed 412^ grains. 
In 1878, the bullion in one of them was worth 92 cents in 
gold, in open market. 

The people now had "hard money" again, but they 
found it inconvenient, and most of them preferred paper 
money. Congress authorized the Secretary of the Treasury 
to deposit the silver dollars in the vaults of the government 
and issue in place of them silver certificates in equal amount. 
The time was now approaching when the specie resumption 
act of 1875 was to take effect. In December, 1878, treas- 
ury notes and gold were quoted alike. But many said that 
the government would not be able to resume specie pay- 
ments because it could not obtain sufficient gold. On the 
1st of January, 1879, ^'^^ treasury account stood: 

Legal tender notes outstanding, to be redeemed. . . .$346,681,016 

Held by the government 70,000,000 

Held by national banks 70,000,000 

In circulation among the people 206,681,016 

Amount of gold subject to the order of the secretary 

of the treasury 135,000,000 

Or about 40 per cent, of the amount to be redeemed. 



i88o] NATIONAL CONVENTIONS 499 

When the expected "rush on the treasury" came, only- 
eleven million dollars were offered for redemption in 
gold. As soon as the people found that they could get 
gold for their greenbacks, they did not want it. The whole 
transaction illustrates a saying of the times that " the way 
to resume is to resume." Shortly before resumption-day. 
United States bonds at four and one half per cent were sold 
by the government at 10 1. In less than two years, four 
per cent bonds were selling at 128. Here is a point for 
all who wish to prosper: to keep one's promises, to pay his 
debts promptly, and credit will always be good. 

The election of 1880 was now approaching. President 
Hayes had announced before his inauguration that he would 
not be a candidate for a second term. 

Four parties met in national convention in 1880 and 
nominated candidates for President and Vice-President. 
The Republicans, at Chicago, in June, nominated James A. 
Garfield, of Ohio, and Chester A. Arthur, of New York, 
on a platform approving the work of previous Republican 
administrations and advocating aid to popular education 
in the state, by the national government, "to the extent 
of its constitutional ability"; internal improvements at 
national expense; the restriction of immigration; the ex- 
tinction of polygamy, and civil service reform. The 
platform clearly announced that the United States is "a 
sovereign nation. 

In the nominating convention, the three leading candi- 
dates were General Grant, James G. Blaine, and John Sher- 
man. For Grant and "the third term," three hundred and 
six delegates voted to the end. The Blaine and Sherman 
men combined and nominated Garfield. 

In June, at Chicago, the Greenback party nominated 
James B. Weaver, of Iowa, and B. J. Chambers, of Texas. 
The platform repeated that of the party of 1876, and 
demanded the regulation of interstate commerce by Con- 
gress, and a graduated income tax. 

The Prohibitionists met in Cleveland, in June, and 
nominated Neal Dow, of Maine, and A. M. Thompson, 
on a platform essentially the same as in 1872 and 1876. 

At Cincinnati, in June, Winfield S. Hancock, of Penn- 



500 EXPANSION [1S81-1886 

sylvania, and William H. English, of Indiana, were named 
by the Democrats. The platform declared for "home 
rule"; the strict maintenance of the public faith; honest 
money, consisting of gold and silver, and paper convertible 
into coin on demand"; also "a tariff for revenue only"; 
the exclusion of the Chinese, "except for travel, education, 
and foreign commerce," and "public land for actual set- 
tlers." 

For the Republican ticket, 4,454,416 popular votes and 
214 electoral votes were cast. Hancock and English 
received 155 electoral votes and 4,444,952 popular votes. 
Weaver received 308,578 popular votes. Both houses of 
Congress were Republican. Garfield was inaugurated 
March 4, 188 1. 

On the 2d of July, the President left the White House 
to attend commencement at his alma mater, Williams Col- 
lege, and had just entered the Pennsylvania station in 
Washington, when he was shot in the back by a disap- 
pointed ofifice-seeker named Charles J. Guiteau. For a 
time there was hope of recovery. He died at Elberon, 
New Jersey, September 19, 1881, and Chester A. Arthur 
succeeded as President. There was at the time no Presi- 
dent pro tempore of the Senate. The forty-seventh Con- 
gress did not meet till December, therefore there was no 
Speaker of the House. By the act of 1792, the presidential 
succession, in case of the death of the Vice-President, went 
to the President of the Senate pro tempore or if there 
should be no such oflficer, then to the Speaker of the House. 
The situation in 1881, therefore, was both unusual and 
critical. There was no provision for the succession to 
President Arthur, in case of his death or inability to serve. 
After five years, Congress passed the presidential succession 
act, in January, 1886. In case of the death or inability of 
both President and Vice-President, the succession passes 
to the members of the Cabinet in the order of the creation 
of the department. First, to the Secretary of State, or if 
there be none, to the Secretary of the Treasury, and thus, 
in their order, to the secretaries of War, of Justice (the 
Attorney-General), of the Post-Office, of the Navy, of the 
Interior, and of Agriculture. 



1882-1884] POLITICS 501 

Several acts of great importance were now passed. In 
1882, polygamy was prohibited, and the Territory of Utah 
was placed under the superintendence of five commissioners, 
appointed by the President, to conduct the elections. 
Polygamy was supposed to be gradually extinguished 
under the act known as the "Edmunds Act," from Senator 
George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, who proposed it. 

The demand for legislation excluding the Chinese was 
general, and a bill was passed rigidly excluding them from 
the country for twenty years, but it was vetoed by the 
President as not being "reasonable" in the sense in which 
that word was used, with reference to their exclusion, in 
the treaty with China of 1880. But on the 6th of May, 
1882, he signed a bill excluding them for ten years. 

In January, 1883, Congress passed a "reform" civil 
service act, whose primary purpose was to secure competent 
employees for the government, and to protect them from 
removal except "for just reasons and the good of the ser- 
vice." The powers of the national civil service board were 
enlarged, and a code adopted regulating appointments, 
promotions, and dismissals. The death of Garfield con- 
vinced the people that the "spoil system" ought to be 
abolished. In 1883, most of the internal taxes imposed 
during the war were abolished, or greatly reduced. Tariff 
rates were cut down. The country was getting back to a 
peace footing. 

Many people demanded other, and as they thought 
greater, reforms. These were fairly set forth in the six 
party platforms and nominations of 1884. The Repub- 
licans met in convention at Chicago, in June, and nominated 
James G. Blaine, of Maine, and John A. Logan, of Illinois. 
In addition to its approval of twenty-four years of Repub- 
lican administration, the platform advocated the establish- 
ment of a national bureau of labor and the enforcement of 
the eight-hour law for all employees of the government; 
civil service reform; the forfeiture of all public lands for 
which corporations (railroads) had not performed what they 
had promised to perform as a condition of the grant from 
Congress; "the restoration of our navy to its old-time 
strength and efificiency," and the suppression of polygamy. 



502 EXPANSION [1884 

A month later, the Democrats met in Chicago and 
nominated Grover Cleveland, governor of New York, and 
Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. The platform was very 
long, and charged the Republicans with identifying the 
government with monopolies to the injury of the people; 
demanded civil service reform, and the "abolition of unne- 
cessary taxes, amounting to one hundred million dollars 
yearly, collected from a suffering people." The whole 
platform, like that on which Tilden and Hendricks had 
been nominated in 1876, was a demand for "reform." 

The Prohibitionists, at Pittsburg, in July, named John 
P. St. John, of Kansas, and William Daniel, of Maryland. 
The American Prohibitionists had met at Chicago, in June, 
had nominated Samuel C. Pomeroy, of Kansas, and John 
A. Conant, of Connecticut. 

The Greenback party nominated Benjamin F. Butler, of 
Massachusetts, and A. M. West, of Mississippi, in May, at 
Indianapolis, on a platform that called for the regulation of 
interstate commerce by Congress and the establishment of 
a government postal telegraph system; a graduated income 
tax, and prohibition of the importation of contract labor. 

The Equal Rights party, at San Francisco, in September, 
nominated Belva A. Lockwood, of the District of Columbia, 
and Marietta L. Stow, of California. Its platform demanded 
equal rights for women and men. 

The variety of platforms in 1884 might at first mislead 
one to think that the country was split into factions. This 
was in part true. Blaine's nomination displeased many 
Republicans, because they believed that it signified the con- 
tinuation of a public policy inimical to the harmony of the 
North and the South, and straightway they announced that 
they should support Cleveland. They were nicknamed 
"mugwumps." Judging by the election they carried out 
their intention. A common feeling possessed millions of 
voters that monopolies and corporations of various kinds 
were becoming dangerous to the country; that they bribed 
judges and juries, bought legislatures, and practically con- 
trolled Congress. The campaign of 1884 may be called 
"the campaign of discontent." Cleveland and Hendricks 
received 219 electoral votes and 4,874,986 popular votes; 



1885-1886] CLEVELAND 503 

Blaine and Logan, 182 electoral votes and 4,85 1,981 popu- 
lar votes. For Butler were cast 175,370 votes, and for St. 
John, 150,369. Both branches of Congress were Demo- 
cratic. For the first time since Buchanan (1856) the 
Democratic party was in control of the government. Cleve- 
land was inaugurated March 4, 1885. 

We have now come to our own time, to men in public 
life whose names are familiar and to political acts and issues 
which are fresh in the memory of the people. The issues 
are largely of an industrial nature; that is, they are ques- 
tions affecting labor, wages, transportation, strikes, trusts, 
monopolies, corporations, and the public lands. 

When, on the 4th of July, 1826, Adams and Jefferson 
died, the people said that with them passed the last link 
between the new America and the old America of the 
Revolution. When General Grant died, July 23, 1885, 
one of the greatest figures of the Civil War period passed 
away. Our country had bestowed upon him its highest 
honors. Possessed of them all, he remained "in his sim- 
plicity sublime." North and South mourned at his tomb. 
Many men, like Grant, became distinguished when the life 
of the Union was at stake, and freely and fully rendered 
their country eminent services. As the ages pass, the 
American people will remember two of them above all 
others who lived "with malice toward none, with charity 
for all" — Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. 

The Democratic party returned to power under promise 
to carry through many reforms. For twelve years Ameri- 
can wage-earners had been complaining that foreign work- 
men were brought over in such numbers and under contracts 
for such low wages that American workmen could not 
compete with them. On the 26th of February, 1885, the 
President signed the bill prohibiting the importation and 
migration of foreigners and aliens under contract to per- 
form labor in the United States. 

On the i8th of January, 1887, a law was passed regu- 
lating the counting of the electoral vote. Disputed 
questions are to be settled by each house separately. If 
Congress cannot agree, the return sent by the governor 
of the state under its seal shall be counted. 



504 EXPANSION [1887-1888 

Much complaint had been made by manufacturers, 
farmers, and producers, all over the country, that local 
freight charges were higher than charges for "long hauls" 
from the West, so that local trade suffered. Powerful 
combinations could thus undersell weaker ones. The vari- 
ous state laws regulating trade were confusing and contra- 
dictory. To remedy these evils, Congress enacted a law, 
February 4, 1887, "to regulate commerce," called the 
Interstate Commerce Law. It created an interstate com- 
mission to see that equal facilities for transportation are 
given by public carriers without discrimination. Printed 
schedules of freight and passenger charges were now posted 
in all stations, and charges, if lawful, were "reasonable and 
just." 

The Alaska seal fisheries and the New Foundland fish- 
eries was a subject of much diplomatic discussion between 
the United States and England, and several laws were 
passed authorizing the President to protect American fish- 
ermen and fishing vessels. But the principles in dispute 
between the two countries were left for future settle- 
ment. 

In May, 1888, Congress empowered the President to 
arrange a conference between the United States and the 
American nations south of our country, for the purpose of 
strengthening our peace and commerce with those coun- 
tries. Sixteen American nations responded, and sent depu- 
ties to a Pan-American congress at Washington, in 1889. 
The congress advocated : 

International arbitration, the Monroe Doctrine, a uni- 
form currency among American nations, reciprocity in 
trade, and a treaty protecting patents and trade-marks. 
One of the results was the establishing of the Bureau of 
American Republics at Washington. 

In June, 1888, Congress established a department of 
labor, in charge of a commissioner of labor. He was given 
many duties, but chiefly to report to Congress the cost of 
producing articles in this country and abroad; to report 
rates of wages, hours of labor, and the effect of tariff laws. 
On the 1st of October, 1888, Congress, by law, forbade the 
return of any Chinese laborer who had left the country. 



i888] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 505 

Five political parties met in national convention, drew 
up platforms, and nominated tickets in 1888. 

In May the Union Labor party, at Cincinnati, nomi- 
nated Andrew J. Streeter, of Illinois, and Charles E. Cun- 
ningham, of Arkansas. The platform declared that general 
discontent prevailed among all wealth-producers. The 
farmers, the party declared, were poor; business of all kinds 
was depressed; land monopolies flourished, and "the Senate 
of the United States has become an open scandal, its mem- 
bership being purchased by the rich in open defiance of the 
popular will." To remedy these and other evils, the party 
proposed that land ownership should be limited by law, 
and railroads and telegraphs should be owned by the people, 
like the postal service; the coinage of silver be made as 
free as the coinage of gold ; postal savings banks be estab- 
lished; strikes and labor disputes be settled by arbitration, 
and equal pay should be given to both sexes for equal work. 
Pensions should be provided for every honorably discharged 
soldier and sailor. Congress should enact a graduated 
income-tax law. United States Senators should be elected 
by the vote of the people in districts. The Chinese and all 
forms of foreign contract labor should be excluded. Woman 
suffrage should be extended, and there should be an "abo- 
lition of usury, monopoly, and trusts." 

At the same time the United Labor party met in Cin- 
cinnati, and nominated Robert H. Cowdrey, of Illinois, and 
W. H. T. Wakefield, of Kansas, on a platform similar to 
the Union Labor, but demanding also the adoption of the 
Australian voting system, and the single-tax or land-tax 
system advocated by Henry George. 

The Prohibitionists nominated Clinton B. Fiske, of New 
Jersey, and John A. Brooks, of Missouri. The platform 
called for the abolition of the internal revenue system, for 
equal suffrage, for a national law governing marriage and 
divorce, for the prohibition of monopolies, for the obser- 
vation of the Sabbath, arbitration, for labor reform, for the 
exclusion of all immigrants unable to make a living, and 
for the denial of the right to vote to any person not a citi- 
zen of the United States. 

At St. Louis, in June, the Democrats renominated Cleve- 



5o6 EXPANSION [i888 

land, with Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, on a platform 
demanding tariff reform, the reduction of the revenue, and 
the admission of the territories of Washington, Dakota, 
Montana, and New Mexico. In his annual message to 
Congress, in 1887, President Cleveland departed from 
precedent in such documents, and advocated the immediate 
reduction of the tariff. Roger Q. Mills, a Democratic 
representative from Texas, reported a new tariff bill, soon 
after the President's message was received. It passed the 
House, which was Democratic, but was rejected by the 
Senate, which was Republican. The Mills bill was advo- 
cated in the St. Louis platform. 

When the President sent in his message, there was a sur- 
plus in the treasury of over fifty million dollars, and it was 
daily increasing. By the close of the financial year, June 
30, 1888, it reached one hundred and twenty-five million. 
What was to be done with the money? The St. Louis 
platform declared this surplus "demoralizing," as it encour- 
aged "extravagant expenses," the effect of "extravagant 
taxation," and advocated a decrease in taxation. 

Two weeks after the St. Louis convention, the Repub- 
licans, at Chicago, nominated Benjamin Harrison, of Indi- 
ana, and Levi P. Morton, of New York. The platform 
advocated protective duties on wool; the repeal of all 
internal taxes not necessary: the exclusion of the Chinese, 
and of foreign contract labor; opposition to trusts; the 
speedy admission of Washington, the Dakotas, Montana 
Idaho, and Wyoming, and of Arizona and New Mexico, 
as soon as qualified to become states; the extinction of 
polygamy in Utah; bimetallism — "the equal use of both 
gold and silver as money; free schools" ; army and navy 
fortifications; the protection of our fisheries; the Monroe 
Doctrine; civil service reform; the extension of the pension 
laws, and sympathy with "all wise and well-directed efforts 
for the promotion of temperance and morality." 

So the great issues in 1888 were: The tariff, internal 
taxation, labor reform, and prohibition. 

When the vote was counted, February 13, 1889, it was 
discovered that nearly 11,400,000 votes had been cast. 
Harrison and Morton received 233 electoral votes and 



1889-1890] THOMAS B. REED 507 

5,440,708 popular votes; Cleveland and Thurman received 
5,536,242 popular votes and 168 electoral votes; Streeter 
received 146,836 votes, and Fiske, 246,876. 

Both houses of Congress were Republican. Thus there 
was an entire change from 1884.. Harrison, a grandson of 
President William H. Harrison, was inaugurated March 4, 
1889. 

In April, 1889, New York City celebrated the one 
hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of Washington. 
The ceremonies of April, 1789, were repeated as far as 
possible. President Harrison made the journey to New 
York over the route Washington had taken ; was received 
as he was received, and on the very spot where Washing- 
ton took the oath of office, the President took part in an 
impressive ceremonial. A religious service, social enter- 
tainments, and various receptions, and a military procession 
of great length, were features of the hour. An historic 
pageant of extraordinary interest was the naval display. 
The Essex represented the navy in the days of Washington 
and the War of 18 12; the Kearsarge brought back memo- 
ries of the Civil War, and the Chicago represented the new 
navy. 

Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, was chosen Speaker of the 
fifty-first Congress. To obstruct legislation some members, 
though present, refused to answer to the roll-call or to vote. 
The Speaker directed the clerk to record these members as 
"present but not voting." This ruling was novel. The 
minority protested in vain. They carried the question to 
the Supreme Court, and it sustained the Speaker. 

The Republicans had promised in their platform to 
extend the pension list. This they did by the act known 
as the dependent pension bill, passed June 27, 1890. In 

1889, the pensions amounted to $89,000,000; in 1891, to 
$118,500,000; in 1893, to $158,000,000, and continued 
at nearly this amount for the next seven years. 

It cannot have escaped notice that all the platforms in 
1888 cried out against trusts and monopolies, and for that 
matter, that the cry had been heard more or less for a dozen 
years. The fifty-first Congress passed an act, June 26, 

1890, to protect trade and commerce against unlawful 



5o8 EXPANSION [1889-1890 

restraints and monopolies. Practically, this law empowered 
the courts of the United States to pronounce judgment on 
all contracts and declare void all injurious to the public, 
in cases coming before them for trial. 

For ten years or more the demand for the free coinage 
of silver had been getting stronger. The Labor party 
called for free coinage in the campaign of 1888, but the 
Republican and Democratic leaders thought it inexpedient 
to raise the silver question at that time. But the number 
of free-silver men in Congress increased. The silver states 
demanded free coinage. When the Bland-Allison act of 
1878 passed, silver was worth one dollar and twenty cents 
an ounce. In December, 1889, i^ was 70^^ cents an 
ounce. Six states had recently been admitted into the 
Union: North Dakota and South Dakota, November 2, 
1889; Montana, November 8, Washington, November 11, 
1889; Idaho, July 3, Wyoming, July 10, 1890. 

Four of these were silver states. The Senate was now 
strong for free silver. Two bills, quite similar, originated 
one in each house, and finally, by compromise, a new law 
was passed in July. 

The Secretary of the Treasury should purchase four 
million five hundred thousand fine ounces of silver each 
month. This was one hundred and forty tons. 

He was not compelled to coin it, but could store the 
bullion in the government vaults. After July i, 1891, the 
Secretary could issue silver certificates against the bullion 
on hand. It was hoped that the purchase of so much 
silver by the government would keep up its price. 

Senator John Sherman was one of the committee of con- 
ference when the bill was finally agreed to. He was not 
its author. However, the bill was known as the "Sherman 
act" of July 14, 1890. 

On the day of the Sherman act Congress also passed 
the McKinley tariff bill, which was signed by the President. 
It took its name, as bills usually do, from the chairman of 
the committee that brings in the bill. William McKinley 
was chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the 
House. The tariff had been an issue in 1888, and the 
people expected some reversion of the law. The McKin- 



1890] THE Mckinley tariff 509 

ley bill put sugar on the free list and made a general reduc- 
tion of duties. The opponents of the law carried it to the 
Supreme Court, but it was declared constitutional. The 
law went into effect October 6, 1890. 

Changes and improvements in the means of communi- 
cation and new needs of trade and commerce led to the 
Interstate Commerce act of 1887. Some states had passed 
stringent laws prohibiting the manufacture or sale of intoxi- 
cating liquors. But the laws were evaded by citizens who 
went to other states, bought liquor, and returning home, 
sold it, although the law forbade. The Supreme Court 
decided that intoxicating liquors made in one state, taken 
to another, and there sold, were protected by the Inter- 
state Commerce law from any state law, on the ground 
that such a state law was an interference in restraint of trade. 
To meet this difficulty, Congress passed the Original Pack- 
age law, August 8, 1890, which provided that all such 
original packages of liquor or of other articles brought into 
a state should be subject to its local laws the same as if 
made within the state. 

For seventy years the people had been legislating about 
lotteries, and nearly all the states forbade them by their 
constitutions. The Louisiana lottery, at New Orleans, still 
carried on an enormous business, and largely through the 
mails. At last Congress by law excluded lottery tickets, 
circulars, and orders from the mails. This law of Septem- 
ber 2'j, 1890, killed the lottery and drove it out of the 
United States. 

Much complaint had been made for many years that 
the public lands were falling into the control of corporations 
which held them as investments. Congress, on September 
29, 1890, declared the forfeiture of all lands held by corpo- 
rations for the construction of railroads which had not yet 
been built, or the conditions of the land grants for which 
had not been fulfilled. Lands equal in area to nearly one- 
fifth of our national domain (excepting Alaska) have at 
some time been given to railroads and canals. 

In December, 1890, at St. Louis, a convention assem- 
bled composed of delegates from various farmers' unions 
then existing all over the country. Organizations such as the 



5IO EXPANSION [1890-1892 

Patrons of Husbandry and the Farmers' Grange, or League, 
had been forming for ten years past. Their purpose was 
to elect men to state legislatures and to Congress who 
would look out for the farmers' interest, to compel mer- 
chants and manufacturers of all articles used on the farm to 
sell them cheaper, and to promote agricultural knowledge 
and social relations among farmers. 

So strong was the Alliance in 1890 that it elected gov- 
ernors in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and South 
Dakota; many members of state legislatures; eighteen 
members of the fifty-second Congress, and controlled the 
election of United States Senators in seven states. 

The Alliance was not taken very seriously by the old 
politicians at first, but when the congressional election of 
1890 was over, it was discovered that instead of being 
Republican with a majority of eighteen, the House was 
Democratic with a majority of one hundred and forty- 
seven. The Alliance had nine Congressmen. It also had 
three Senators. In case of a close division, the Alliance 
men would have almost the balance of power. 

Four parties nominated candidates and drew up plat- 
forms in 1892. Early in June the Republicans, in c5nven- 
tion at Minneapolis, renominated Harrison, with Whitelaw 
Reid, of New York, as Vice-President. The platform 
rested on the McKinley tariff. Silver and gold should be 
coined, and the parity of the two metals be maintained. 
The platform also advocated the extension of the free deliv- 
ery service to towns and to the rural districts, the control 
of the Nicaragua Canal by the United States, national aid 
to the Columbian Exposition, restoration of our merchant 
marine by home-built ships, the Monroe Doctrine, and the 
exclusion of pauper immigration. 

Later in June, at Chicago, the Democrats renominated 
Cleveland, with Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, as Vice- 
President. The platform denounced the McKinley tariff; 
declared trusts and combinations to be the effect of prohibi- 
tive taxes; denounced the "Sherman act" of 1890; advo- 
cated both gold and silver as money, and the maintenance 
of them and of paper currency as lawful money; demanded 
the repeal of the ten per cent tax on state bank issues; 



1892] THE Mckinley tariff 511 

favored the exclusion of the Chinese and of contract labor, 
and favored national aid to the Columbian Exposition; and 
denounced "the notorious sweating system," convict labor, 
and the employment in factories of children under fifteen 
years of age. 

The Prohibitionists met at Cincinnati, in June, and 
nominated John Bidwell, of California, and J. B. Cranfill, 
of Texas. The platform was like that of 1884 and 1888. 
It pronounced against trusts, monopolies, the alien owner- 
ship of land, and mob law. 

The various labor parties and the Alliance united as 
the People's party, held their convention in Omaha, in 
July, and nominated James B. Weaver, of Iowa, and James 
G. Field, of Virginia. The platform demanded the free 
and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the ratio of 
16 to I; a graduated income tax; postal savings banks; 
the national ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and tele- 
phones; the exclusion of pauper immigration; eight hours 
as the lawful period of a day's labor; the election of United 
States Senators by direct popular vote, and a national cur- 
rency, issued only by the government, as a full legal tender 
for all debts, and to be distributed to the people at two per 
cent annual interest. 

Though these various demands are at first bewildering, 
the real issue in the campaign was the McKinley tariff. 
Cleveland and Stevenson were elected, receiving 5,556,533 
popular and 277 electoral votes. Harrison and Reid 
received 145 electoral and 5,175,577 popular votes. 
Weaver received 22 electoral and 1,122,045 popular votes. 
Bidwell received 279,191 votes. The House of Represen- 
tatives stood 216 Democrats, 125 Republicans, and 11 
Populists; the Senate, 44 Democrats, 37 Republicans, 
and 4 Populists. Thus the result reversed the vote of 
1888, and put the Democrats again in power. Mr. 
Cleveland was inaugurated for a second term, March 4, 
1893. 

President Harrison, on the 15th of February, 1893, had 
sent to the Senate a treaty providing for the annexation of 
the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, and recom- 
mended its ratification. The islands were in a state of 



512 EXPANSION [1893 

revolution. Five days after his inauguration, President 
Cleveland recalled the treaty from the Senate. He had 
already sent James H. Blount, of Georgia, to Honolulu, 
with authority superseding that of our minister there, John 
L. Stevens. The island was in possession of Americans 
and our flag was flying. Acting under orders, Blount 
hauled down the flag. President Cleveland recognized the 
Hawaiian queen, but the people of the islands, organizing 
a provisional government, with Sanford B. Dole, an Ameri- 
can, as president, banished her and her family. The 
attempt to restore the monarchy failed, and the Hawaiian 
Republic became a settled government. 

Soon after the inauguration, a panic broke out like that 
of 1873. Failures increased rapidly all summer. Many 
causes were assigned, and one in particular, the silver-pur- 
chasing law of 1890. The President summoned Congress 
in extra session August 7. He ascribed the financial 
depression to the Sherman act. The government, up to 
the 13th of July, 1893, had purchased silver to the amount 
of one hundred and forty-seven million dollars with treas- 
ury notes. These were redeemable in gold. Over forty 
million dollars of these notes had been so redeemed in one 
year. As fast as redeemed, the notes were reissued, to be 
redeemed again. The President called this drain upon the 
treasury an "endless chain." The government, he said, 
must do one of two things: cease buying silver or cease 
paying out gold. 

There were in 1893, $346,000,000 in treasury notes and 
$151,000,000 in silver certificates, or in the aggregate 
nearly half a million dollars, redeemable in gold. Silver 
had fallen so that in 1893 a silver dollar was worth only 
sixty-seven cents. When the President summoned Con- 
gress in extra session, the government had ninety million 
dollars in gold. As matters were going this would soon be 
exhausted. 

But many people and their representatives in Congress 
opposed the repeal of the silver act. The repeal was 
debated in Congress till November, when it was finally 
carried, November i, 1893. 

Tariff reform had been promised, and the administration 



1894] THE WILSON TARIFF; VENEZUELA 513 

now fulfilled its pledge. William L. Wilson, of West Vir- 
ginia, brought in a tariff bill when Congress met in 1893. 
It reduced duties generally. For years a demand had been 
made by one party or another for an income tax. The 
Wilson bill put a tax of two per cent on annual incomes of 
more than four thousand dollars. The Wilson tariff did 
not meet the President's approval, but became a law with- 
out his signature, August 27, 1894. The Supreme Court 
soon after declared the income tax clause of the law uncon- 
stitutional. 

Meanwhile, the expenditures of the government were 
greater by thirty-six million dollars a year than its revenues. 
One party claimed that the fault was in the repeal of the 
McKinley tariff; that is, in the Wilson bill. Another party 
said it was due to the demonetization of silver; everything 
would go right if we had the free coinage of silver. Others 
said that the Wilson bill had not yet had time to work. 

But the government steadily fell behind ; the debt was 
increasing four million dollars every month. The gold 
reserve was getting dangerously low. In order to get gold, 
Congress authorized an issue of bonds. Issue followed 
issue until nearly two hundred and sixty-three million dol- 
lars were sold. They were sold at a premium, and paid 
about four per cent interest. The last issue was opened to 
popular subscription. More than ten times the amount of 
the issue was subscribed, which proved the faith of the 
people in the government. 

For half a century the boundary between Venezuela 
and British Guiana had been in dispute. Finally, in 1895, 
diplomatic relations between Venezuela and Great Britain 
ceased. Great Britain demanded an extension of Guiana. 
Venezuela protested. To the surprise of the people of the 
United States, and to the world in general, President Cleve- 
land sent a message to Congress discussing the case of 
Venezuela. He reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine, and 
declared that the United States protested against the ex- 
tension of British Guiana at the expense of Venezuela. 
He invited England to submit the dispute to arbitration. 
This England refused to do. The President then suggested 
to Congress the creation of a boundary commission. Con- 



514 EXPANSION [1896 

gress appropriated one hundred thousand dollars for the 
use of a commission of five to be nominated by the Presi- 
dent. He declared that the United States would enforce 
the Monroe Doctrine and prevent aggression upon the 
rights of Venezuela as it would prevent aggression upon 
the rights and interests of the United States. Happily for 
the peace of the world, England and Venezuela signed a 
treaty of arbitration, at Washington, November 12, 1896, 
and the whole dispute ended. 

The free silver agitation of the preceding twelve years 
produced great changes in parties in 1896. This was mani- 
fested in their platform. 

The Prohibitionists, in May, at Pittsburg, nominated 
Joshua Levering, of Mar3dand, and Hale Johnson, of Illi- 
nois. The National party, meeting in the same city at the 
same time, nominated C. E. Bentley, of Nebraska, and 
T. H. Southgate, of North Carolina. The platforms of 
the two parties were like those of 1892. 

In June, at St. Louis, William McKinley, of Ohio, and 
Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey, were nominated by the 
Republicans. The platform advocated the policy of pro- 
tection, of reciprocity, and opposition to the free coinage 
of silver except by international agreement with the leading 
commercial nations of the world. "All our silver and 
paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold." 
The Monroe Doctrine should be applied in its full extent. 
A national board of arbitration should be created for the 
settlement of all differences arising between employers and 
employees in interstate commerce; that is, on railroads. 

On the 4th of July, at New York, the Socialist Labor 
party nominated Charles H. Matchett, of New York, and 
Matthew McGuire, of New Jersey. The party demanded 
the national ownership of railroads, telegraphs and tele- 
phones, and of all other means of transportation and 
communication; the municipal ownership of all city fran- 
chises; the protection of all wage-earners; the compulsory 
education of all children below fourteen years of age, and 
the supply of books, clothing, and food when necessary, and 
equal industrial rights for all. 

Four days later, the Democratic convention met at 



1896] SILVER VS. GOLD 515 

Chicago, and nominated William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, 
and Arthur Sewall, of Maine, The platform demanded 
"the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver at 
the present legal ratio of 16 to i, without waiting for the 
aid or consent of any other nation," There should be 
more bond issues, and a tariff should be for revenue only; 
an income tax should be imposed by Congress, Foreign 
pauper labor should be excluded, and New Mexico and 
Arizona should be admitted into the Union, 

On the 24th of July, two other conventions met in St, 
Louis. The Silver party indorsed Bryan and Sewall; the 
People's party indorsed Bryan, but nominated Thomas E. 
W^atson, of Georgia, Free silver was "the pressing issue." 

In the Republican convention, when the clause in the 
platform was adopted on the free coinage of silver, (?) the 
delegates of the silver states (South Dakota, Montana, 
Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado), twenty in number, 
left the hall and the party. 

A similar but more serious split followed the adoption 
of the free silver clause by the Democratic convention. 
The National Democratic party met in convention at Indi- 
anapolis, in September, and nominated John M, Palmer, 
of Illinois, and Simon B, Buckner, of Kentucky, on a 
"gold" platform. 

Thus the campaign of 1896 was between the "silver 
men" and the "gold men" of the country; that is, for or 
against the free and unlimited coinage of silver, McKinley 
and Hobart were elected, receiving 271 electoral and 
7,121,342 popular votes. The vote for Bryan was 6,502,- 
600, and he received 176 electoral votes. For Palmer and 
Buckner 134,731 votes were cast; for Levering, 123,428; 
for Matchett, 35,306; for Bentley, 13,535. Both branches 
of Congress were Republican, and there was an increase in 
the number of Populist members — the name Populist having 
been given by the Indianapolis convention to all supporters 
of free silver. On the 4th of March, 1897, McKinley was 
inaugurated. He summoned Congress in extra session to 
devise an adequate revenue for the government. On the 
24th of July, the bill brought in by Nelson Dingley, of 
Maine, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, 



5i6 EXPANSION [1897 

became the "Dingley" tariff law, by the signature of the 
President. 

Four centuries had now passed since the discovery of 
the western world by Spain. The prospect, once omi- 
nous, that America would remain New Spain indefinitely, 
passed away with the growth of the English colonies. We 
have seen how, in the fifteenth century, Spain laid claim 
to nearly all the continent of North America, and that she 
retained her hold until the revolutions of 1820. Mexico 
fell from her grasp, and this meant the loss of the vast 
California country. We purchased Louisiana in 1803 from 
Napoleon, and it extended westward to the quite unknown 
boundary between New France and New Spain. In 18 19, 
we bought the Floridas from Spain, and in 1848 the Cali- 
fornia country became ours as a result of war with Mexico. 
Spain was left only a few islands in the West Indies, the 
remnant of an empire which once stretched from Peru to 
Oregon. 

In 1896 the condition of affairs in Cuba and Porto Rico 
was only a little worse than it had been for thirty years. 
Civil war was raging, and Spain was pursuing her policy of 
relentless extermination. On the lOth of February, Valeri- 
ano Weyler arrived in Cuba as captain-general. He decided 
to lay waste the island and bring the insurgents to terms. 
The peasants, who were pursuing peaceful pursuits, were 
the first object of his fury. They were ordered to leave 
their districts and to concentrate in the towns, particularly 
in Havana. They were driven from their little farms at 
the point of the bayonet, and were gathered into the towns, 
whence they were called "reconcentrados," or persons 
cooped together. The result that was planned followed. 
Unused to confinement and ill-fed, they speedily sickened, 
and died in such numbers as to shock the civilized world. 
It was a case of systematic starvation. 

By March, 1896, Spain had one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand soldiers in Cuba, and yet the rebellion was not sup- 
pressed, nor was there prospect of suppression. The 
Cubans fought in scattered bands, and kept the Spaniards 
in the towns. The only hope of Spain was to starve the 
island into obedience. This hope was vain. 



1897] CUBA 517 

In the United States, public sentiment was not indiffer- 
ent to the condition of Cuba. Both the Democratic and 
the Republican parties, in their national conventions of 
1896, expressed strong sympathy with the Cubans, and 
urged that our country interfere in the interest of human- 
ity. On December 21, the Senate Committee on Foreign 
Relations reported a resolution recognizing the Republic of 
Cuba. Then the excitement began. Capitalists who had 
investments in the island protested that recognition would 
cause war with Spain and "unsettle values." The Presi- 
dent, Mr. Cleveland, was opposed to war. A policy of 
strict neutrality, he thought, should be pursued. 

But meanwhile matters grew worse in Cuba. Our 
consul-general, Fitzhugh Lee, was reporting the horrible 
state of affairs. Our people were suspecting that the 
whole truth had not been told. Thus the question 
stood when President McKinley came into ofifice. He did 
not desire war, but he was convinced that in some righteous 
way the long-standing Cuban question must be settled. 
The Spaniards held as prisoners some residents of Cuba who 
claimed to be, and who were, American citizens. Presi- 
dent McKinley demanded that these be promptly released 
and their wrongs redressed. His firm tone was not mis- 
understood. By the last of April, every American prisoner 
had been given up. The danger of war seemed to pass 
away. 

On May 20, 1897, the Senate passed a resolution recog- 
nizing the belligerent rights of the Cubans. The House 
signed it. Just at this time, May 24, the President asked 
Congress for fifty thousand dollars with which to send sup- 
plies to suffering Americans in Cuba. The request was 
promptly responded to. Spain consented that food should 
be sent through General Lee. This was intervention of a 
very substantial kind. It practically fed the enemies of 
Spain in Cuba. 

President McKinley appointed General Stewart L. 
Woodford minister to Spain. He neglected no opportu- 
nity to conciliate the Spanish government and secure a 
peaceful solution of the Cuban question. He discovered 
that no such solution was possible. 



5i8 EXPANSION [1898 

Meanwhile Spain did not change her policy in the island. 
Starvation and extermination continued, and Cuba was 
fast becoming a wilderness. Finally our government asked 
that Weyler be recalled. Spain asked for time, and made 
promises of reforms in the island. Our government was 
firm. Weyler was recalled in October, and General Blanco, 
an equally cruel man, was sent in his place. 

At this point our government decided to send a ship of 
war to Havana. This we had a right to do by the law of 
nations. Other governments were thus represented in 
Spanish waters. The Maine was chosen, and reached 
Havana January 24, 1898. A few days later, February 9, 
the Cuban Junta, a political organization active in the in- 
terests of the insurgents, published in one of the New York 
papers a letter written by the Spanish minister in Wash- 
ington, Senor Dupuy de Lome, December 25, 1897, and 
addressed to a friend in Havana. The letter had been 
intercepted. It contained a coarse attack on President 
McKinley. The recall of the minister was promptly 
demanded. The letter disclosed that Spain never intended 
to keep her promises of Cuban reforms. 

Just a week after the publication of this letter, the 
Maine was blown up and totally destroyed at her anchorage 
in Havana harbor; two hundred and sixty-four men and 
two of^cers were killed. The American people were 
astonished ; then they knew that the time had come for 
action. But for forty days they waited till a naval board 
could report on the disaster. Spain expressed no sym- 
pathy. Her officials coolly declared that the ship had been 
blown up from the inside and through lack of discipline. 

On March 28, the President sent the report of our naval 
board to Congress. The board did not fix the blame ; it sim- 
ply reported the facts, that the ship had been destroyed from 
the outside and underneath. This pointed to a submarine 
mine. Excitement was now increasing in America. What 
would Congress do? What would the President do? 
People waited for his message. On April 1 1 it was sent 
to Congress. "In the name of humanity, in the name of 
civilization, in behalf of endangered /Vmerican interests, 
which give us the right and the duty to speak and to act. 



1898] MANILA 519 

the war in Cuba must stop," and he asked Congress to give 
him power to put an end to hostilities in Cuba and to secure 
for the island "a stable government, capable of maintaining 
order and observing its international obligations." Diplo- 
macy, he said, was exhausted. He left results with Con- 
gress. Congress has no diplomatic functions. It can de- 
clare war, but diplomacy is an affair of the Executive. 
The President's message was very conservative. 

On April 13, the House passed a resolution author- 
izing the President to intervene in Cuba, and sent it to the 
Senate. The two branches did not agree as to what should 
be done. The House wished to recognize Cuban inde- 
pendence; the Senate wished to bring Spanish rule in Cuba 
to an end forever. Finally, on the 19th, the two houses 
agreed to a resolution that the people of the island of Cuba 
"ought to be free and independent." 

The new Spanish minister at once demanded his pass- 
ports and left the country. Admiral Sampson, with his 
fleet, was ordered to Havana on the 21st, and the Presi- 
dent proclaimed the blockade of Cuba; on the 23d, the 
Nashville overhauled a Spanish merchantman, with a shot 
across her bows. Two days later Congress declared that war 
with Spain had existed since the 21st of April. Meanwhile 
our minister to Spain, General Woodford, had been given 
his passports and had left Madrid. 

Our country did not desire war and the army was not 
prepared for it. The navy was ready. Soon the blows 
fell thick and fast. In May, Commodore Dewey, com- 
manding the Asiatic squadron of six ships, sailed into 
the tortuous harbor of Manila, regardless of submarine 
mines and frowning forts, and destroyed the Spanish fleet 
of ten warships, under Admiral Montejo. The Spaniard 
was near shore, under the protection of the forts. Not an 
American was killed, nor one of our ships injured. The 
victory was unparalleled. Some months later Manila fell 
into our hands, and the Philippines were at our mercy. 

The Cuban blockade was rigorously maintained. A 
powerful Spanish fleet, under Admiral Cervera, was daily 
expected in Cuban waters from across the sea. The Ore- 
gon, a first-class battle-ship, was ordered to join our fleet. 



520 EXPANSION [1S98 

The Oregon was at San Francisco, more than fourteen 
thousand miles away. Her voyage to join the fleet was 
one of the spectacles of the time. The great ship left San 
Francisco March 19, and turning her steel prow to the 
south, she started on her long voyage around Cape Horn. 
On the 24th of May she reached Jupiter Inlet, Florida, in 
as fine condition as the day she started. Then she joined 
the fleet under Sampson. 

He was looking for Admiral Cervcra's fleet. The Cuban 
coast was reached both by Sampson and by Schley. 
Finally, on the morning of June i. Captain Evans, of the 
Iowa, sighted the Cristobal Colon and the Maria Teresa, 
in Santiago harbor. The Spanish had been discovered in 
their hiding-place. 

Sampson promptly directed that the narrow entrance be 
obstructed. Lieutenant Richmond Pearson Hobson came 
forward with a plan and volunteered to carry it out. With 
a picked crew, he would sink the Merrimac, a collier, in the 
channel. His achievement was one of the boldest deeds in 
naval history. The Merrimac was sighted by the enemy, 
who concentrated a terrible fire upon it. Hobson and his 
men were taken prisoners an hour later, clinging to a raft 
above their submerged vessel. 

On Sunday morning, July 3, at half-past nine, the 
Spanish fleet came rushing out of its harbor. Our ships 
were patrolling the coast and watching for such an attempt 
of the enemy to escape. Then followed such a running 
fight as the world had never seen. In just three hours it 
was over. The Spanish admiral was a captive; his fleet 
was utterly destroyed. Our own was scarcely touched. 
The Spanish loss was 1,764 prisoners, including 99 officers; 
350 killed, 160 wounded. Our loss, incredible as it may 
seem, was one man wounded and one killed, on the Brook- 
lyn. Every Spanish ship was burned and sunk, and they 
were modern, first-class battle-ships. 

The blockade of Cuba was accompanied by military 
operations on the island and on Porto Rico. Matanzas 
was bombarded, as was nearly every important coast town 
except Havana. Our troops were chiefly volunteer militia, 
consisting of men and youth wholly inexperienced in war. 



1898J CONFUSION AT TAMPA 521 

They were hurried to the front. Vast quantities of sup- 
plies were purchased, but for a long time their transportation 
was in terrible confusion. The fault was said to be due to 
the military system which Congress had suffered to grow 
up. Whatever the cause, there was far more suffering, 
sickness, and death among our men due to bad food and 
defective commissary service than to action in the field. 

The fleet was active everywhere in Cuban waters. 
Cables were cut at Cienfuegos and at other points, and 
the blockade strictly maintained. But in spite of our 
watchfulness, some supplies were brought in by blockade- 
runners. 

At the outbreak of the war, April 23, the President 
called for one hundred and twenty-five thousand volun- 
teers, and a month later. May 25, for seventy-five thou- 
sand more. The rendezvous was at Tampa, Florida. On 
June 7 orders came for the army to leave next day. 
More than a week passed before the transports were ready; 
indeed, they never got entirely ready. Confusion reigned 
at Tampa. On June 20, the army began landing at San- 
tiago. There were no launches or lighters; no landing- 
place, except the surf-beaten beach. But the men got 
ashore. The principal ofificers disagreed as to the plan of 
campaign, and very much as in the days of 18 12, the war 
went on without one. The Spaniards had smokeless 
powder and modern guns. Our soldiers were armed in the 
old fashion. Every time an American fired he became a 
mark for the enemy. The Spaniards could not be seen, 
though Mauser bullets rained down from them. There 
was but one thing to do, to clear the front; and away our 
men rushed, uphill, through pathless jungle, over wire 
fences, against intrenched troops and an enemy encased in 
low stone houses. This was the battle of Siboney, on the 
22d, and this the famous charge of the regular troops and 
the Rough Riders, a volunteer company under Colonel 
Wood and Captain Roosevelt. On June 30 occurred the 
assault of our troops on San Juan Hill. The victory at El 
Caney followed. Terrible, stifling heat, confused orders, 
a hidden enemy, an almost impregnable position. But the 
Americans swept all before them. This was July i and 2. 



522 EXPANSION [1898 

Santiago was now invested. Cervera's fleet had been 
destroyed, and our army now knew it. General Shafter 
demanded the surrender of the city. On the i6th, terms 
were agreed on, and on the following day the American flag 
was raised on the city hall. General Shafter and General 
Wheeler received the local powers, of state and church. 
As the flag went up, our bands played "The Star-Spangled 
Banner" and the artillery thundered a salute. 

Other towns speedily gave in. The island of Porto 
Rico was now closely invested, and a campaign began under 
personal direction of the head of the army, General Miles. 
The expedition reached Fajardo, July 25. It passed 
swiftly forward, taking town after town. On the 9th of 
August part of the army lay between Coamo and Aibonito; 
another part, under General Brooke, was ordered to attack 
Mayaguez, the capital of the sugar district. In nineteen 
days the western half of the island was in our hands. Sud- 
denly, amidst operations, just as the men were advancing 
and as others were about to fire, a mounted messenger 
arrived from Ponce with news that a protocol of peace had 
been signed and that the war was over. This was on the 
13th of August. 

In the Philippines, meanwhile, great events had occurred. 
Commodore, now Admiral, Dewey, had captured Manila. 
Troops had been sent from California. Various islands in 
the Philippine group had been invested by our warships, and 
by the 13th of August the vast region had ceased to be 
under Spanish control. 

Peace came suddenly, but not unexpectedly. On July 
22, the Spani.sh minister of war at Madrid, through the 
French minister at Washington, M. Cambon, sent a letter 
to President McKinley asking for peace. On the 30th, 
our Secretary of State, Mr. Day, replied. We desired 
peace, and these were the conditions: 

Spain should relinquish all claim of sovereignty over 
Cuba forever, and should immediately evacuate the island. 
She should cede, at once, to the United States Porto Rico 
and all her other West Indian islands, and an island in the 
Ladrones, which we would select. We would hold and 
occupy Manila, the city and the bay, until its final dispo- 



1898] THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS 523 

sition should be settled by a commission authorized to draw 
up a treaty of peace. 

Spain tried to wriggle out of these conditions, but our 
government was firm, and they were accepted by her in 
every particular. The peace protocol was signed at Wash- 
ington August 12, and hostilities ceased. But the war was 
not over. A treaty of peace alone could put an end to 
that. 

On October i, a commission appointed by the Presi- 
dent, consisting of Mr. Day, who resigned his office as 
Secretary of State; Senators Davis of Minnesota, Frye of 
Maine, Gray of Delaware, and Hon. Whitelaw Reid of New 
York, met in Paris with a similar body of Spanish repre- 
sentatives, and proceeded to draw up a treaty of peace. 
On the loth of December this was signed. Porto Rico 
and other Spanish islands of the West Indies, excepting 
Cuba, were ceded to the United States. The Philippines 
were purchased by us for twenty million dollars, a clear 
case of generosity on our part, for they were at our mercy. 
Cuba was left under our protection. Spain retired from 
America. 

The Spanish-American War left us with many new and 
difficult problems. In the Philippines, an insurrection 
under the lead of Aguinaldo speedily broke out and over- 
spread Luzon. The people of Cuba were anxious to estab- 
lish a stable government, and a powerful party demanded 
independence. 

While the war was in progress, Congress, by joint 
resolution, July 7, annexed the Hawaiian Islands. This 
course had been under consideration a long time, though 
successfully delayed during President Cleveland's adminis- 
tration. Our territory was thus suddenly and very widely 
extended during the year 1898. We ceased being merely 
a continental power; we became a world power with impor- 
tant possessions in Asia. 

Congress proceeded to consider the best form of govern- 
ment for our new possessions. The Constitution extends 
over the states in our Union, but not over the territories, 
or Alaska. It does not extend to Cuba, Porto Rico, 
Hawaii, or the Philippines. The form of government for 



524 EXPANSION [1900 

territories and for these new possessions rests wholly with 
Congress. A military government was provided for Cuba, 
Porto Rico, and the Philippines; a civil government for 
Hawaii. On the 19th of March, 1900, a modified tariff act 
was passed for Porto Rico. A fifteen per cent decrease of 
duties was allowed, and the entire revenue from the oper- 
ation of the act was ordered to be expended in the island 
for the benefit of its people. It was used in support of 
free public schools, for sanitation, and for public works. 

On March 15, 1900, the gold standard currency bill 
became a law. It assured the maintenance of public credit 
and the payment of the national debt on the basis of gold. 

The ten years ending with 1900 were a period of remark- 
able growth in American exports. American commerce 
was extended as never before. Our manufactures outsold 
those of any other nation. The increase in 1900 over the 
exports of 1890 was, in the aggregate, more than two hun- 
dred million dollars — a trade activity which revolutionized 
the financial world. This indicated that New York City 
was becoming the world's commercial center. 

The most striking feature of our commercial expansion 
was the progress of the country in supplying machinery 
and tools for the world. In 1890, our shipments of ma- 
chinery and tools aggregated relatively little in our exports; 
in 1900, more than sixty million dollars worth of machinery 
alone was sent abroad. The change was due to the appre- 
ciation of American work by the outside world. American 
inventive genius has at last gained control of the world's 
markets.. It is probable that America has made only a 
beginning in its export trade. This trade includes all the 
iron and steel interests; brass and metal work; foods and 
food products; fertilizers; cars, carriages, and cycles; tele- 
graphic and scientific instruments; motors, paper, clothing, 
chemicals, sugar, and copper. 

The Spanish-American War added about one million 
square miles to our territory and several millions of people, 
many of whom, in the Philippines, were in a savage 
state. 

In 1776, the population of the United States was less 
than three millions, and its area about eight hundred and 



iQoo] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 525 

thirty thousand square miles; in 1900, the population of 
our country and its dependencies is more than seventy-five 
millions, and the area they inhabit is more than six times 
as great as our original domain at the time of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. 

At Philadelphia, on the 21st of June, 1900, the Repub- 
lican party, assembled in national convention, unanimously 
renominated William McKinley for President, and for Vice- 
President named Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of New 
York. The platform sustained the President's administra- 
tion and repeated the essentials of the platform of 1896. 

The Democratic party met in national convention in 
Kansas City, July 4th, and on the 5th renominated William 
J. Bryan for President, and on the 6th the conven- 
tion named Adlai E. Stevenson for Vice-President. Mr. 
Stevenson had served in this ofifice during the second 
Cleveland administration. The platform repeated that of 
1896.* 

The issues of the campaign were the gold standard; 
expansion; trusts and monopolies; prohibition; and the 
labor question in various forms. The free-silver issue of 
1896 was revived by the Democrats, but the voters showed 
less interest in it than during the campaign of that year. 
Undoubtedly the existence of a state of war in the Phil- 
ippines helped the Republicans. The country was not dis- 
posed to change presidents in war time. The issue of ex- 
pansion as a national policy was not set separately and 

* Nominations were made in convention, also, by the Populists, the 
Prohibitionists, the Socialists, and other parties. 

Nominations by other political parties were made as follows : 

Populists. — William J. Bryan for President; Charles A. Towne, of 
Minnesota, for Vice-President. 

Middle-of-the-Road Populists. — Wharton Barker, of Pennsylvania, 
for President; Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota, for Vice-President. 

Prohibitionists. — John G. WooUey, of Illinois, for President; Henry 
B. Metcalf, of Rhode Island, for Vice-President. 

Socialist Labor. — Job Harriman, of California, for President; Max 
S. Hayes, of Ohio, for Vice-President. 

Social Democrats. — Eugene V. Debs, of Indiana, for President; Job 
Harriman, of California, for Vice-President. 

Socialists. — Joseph F. Malloney, of Massachusetts, for President; 
Valentine Remmill, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. 

United Christians. — Rev. Dr. S. C. Swallow, of Pennsylvania, for 
President; Rev. Charles M. Sheldon, of Kansas, for Vice-President. 



536 EXPANSION [1900 

squarely before the voters, but was involved with the silver, 
the labor and other questions. 

At the November election McKinley and Roosevelt 
received 7,263,266 popular and 292 electoral votes; Bryan 
and Stevenson, 6,415,387 popular votes and 155 electoral. 
The result was interpreted as a strong popular indorsement 
of McKinley's administration. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE RIGHT TO VOTE 

T 789-1900 

The evolution of American politics has been from a 
basis of things to a basis of persons. We began our gov- 
ernment on the basis of property, but time has disclosed 
that man is the chief corner-stone. Evidences of the tran- 
sition are presented sometimes unexpectedly, as in 1895, 
in the objection to an income tax, that "if this be a govern- 
ment of men, taxes must be levied on men, and not on 
property. When all men are taxed according to fixed and 
equitable rules, whatever may be the amount of the burden 
imposed on each individual, the government rests on men, 
not on things." 

In our system of government the fundamental ideas are 
the right to vote, which is the chief political right of indi- 
viduals as citizens, and the right to representation, which 
is the right of individuals in communal relations, and chiefly 
those existing in a civil corporation — the town, the county, 
the commonwealth, or the nation. The American system 
rests fundamentally on the franchise.* All our constitu- 
tions and laws are devices to enfranchise the man. He is 
the center of the civil system. His freedom and responsi- 
bility are the measure of our politics. 

It is not unnatural that the chief struggle in America 
has been and continues to be the struggle for the franchise. 
In a democracy every human interest is eventually valued 
as a political force. Democracy gives character to the indi- 
vidual. It rests the whole case of civilization upon his 
integrity. Thus it follows that crafty men may substitute 
a political device for integrity, and witless men may confuse 

*For an account of the franchise in this country at the close of the 
eighteenth century, see my Constitutional History of the American 
People, Vol. I, Chapter VII. 

527 



528 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [i 789-1900 

integrity with the device. A democracy is at the mercy of 
ideas. If the conduit for their currency is easy and open, 
there is not Hkely to be an upheaval of the state. The 
offices in commonwealth, in city, in county, and in national 
government are safety-valves in our democracy. A talking 
Congress is less destructive than a muzzled populace. Even 
French revolutions collapse when all Paris talks freely. 
The secret of government is to enfranchise ideas. Men 
never talk and fight at the same time. 

In theory there will always be two political parties in a 
democracy. One party will construct its machinery from 
the landless and those without property. It will prescribe 
wealth for those who can take it from those who now hold 
it. A new order is easier than the old. Indeed, is it not 
easier at any time of difificulty to begin anew than sedu- 
lously to carry through the original plan? This is the party 
of the future; the party by amendment; the party for 
change. It finds the world weary of the old reformers, 
who left the rich and the poor, to find the poor and the 
rich, as ever. It finds thought outrunning perfonnance, 
and its philosophy is the philosophy of discontent. It 
knows that the promise of pleasure, of wealth, of power, 
is a more virtuous incentive than is present pain, or present 
poverty, or present weakness. It will be destructive of 
existing institutions, rather than constructive of the insti- 
tutions of to-morrow. It lives in the future, but is forced 
to collect taxes to-day. Could it free its di':ciples from 
these present burdens, there would be but one party in the 
world. It is founded on persons. 

The other party has a long memory. It prefers the 
ease of conserving to the labor of destroying. Men pass 
away; things remain longer; ideas only are immortal. It 
therefore builds on ideas, and attempts to anchor things to 
them. The present is the true time. What has been, 
will be, therefore the passing populace may pass on. Think 
for them, furnish them labor, protect them, but anchor 
them to real things. Identify these interests with the 
interests of the state. Repair, but destroy not. Enfran- 
chise men as thinking creatures; as ideas in the flesh. 
Only little ideas can ruin the commonwealth. Therefore 



1789-1900] HAMILTON; JEFFERSON; FRANKLIN 529 

the great teacher, the great school, the great builder, the 
great industry, the great state. To enfranchise little minds 
is to turn into the streets men who squeak and gibber. 
Secure the means for practical intelligence before placing 
power in the hands of the multitude. Then is the state 
secure. 

In this country these two parties have made our political 
history. At the close of the eighteenth century the con- 
servative party was in power; at the close of the nineteenth 
the radical party is in power. The revolution has been 
from government founded on property to government 
founded on persons. 

In nature the processes of evolution are marked by the 
production of types. It is so in the evolution of govern- 
ment, for government is a natural process. In the closing 
years of the eighteenth century, when the American gov- 
ernments were evolved, the two types of political evolution 
were Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton's ideas of govern- 
ment rest on two propositions — that government is a device 
of checks and balances, created by a few thoughtful men, 
and under their control, is supported by many less thought- 
ful men, who are protected by the device, and prospered 
in their affairs as a compensation for their support. Prop- 
erty is the basis of government. The New England for- 
mulation of the Hamilton idea is that government shall be 
one of laws, and not one of men. 

JefTerson's ideas of government rest also on two main 
propositions — that government is probably a necessary 
device of which the more you have the worse you are off; 
and that government is founded on persons. 

Between Hamilton and Jefferson is Franklin, whose 
concept of government is that "a general government is 
necessary for us, and there is no form of government but 
what may be a blessing to the people if well administered." 

The eighteenth century was the century of modern 
political theories. Their influence is seen in the language 
of all the American and French constitutions of that time. 
Voltaire set the pace for France, Jefferson for America; 
and Jefferson is commonly called, in this country, the 
father of American democracy. Hamilton's and Jefferson's 



530 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789- 1900 

theories of government have been subjected for a century 
to the severe test which, in FrankHn's opinion, discloses 
whether a government is a blessing or a curse to its people — 
the test of administration. The nineteenth century was 
spent in administering the political theories of the eight- 
eenth. In that administration the process was one of 
evolution, and in that evolution the process was marked by 
the production of two administrative types — Daniel Web- 
ster and Abraham Lincoln. When Webster died, Lincoln 
was in his forty-fourth year, and these years of Lincoln's 
life had been the years of Webster's influence and fame. 
His greater orations had already become a part of the 
world's literature; his eloquence had long been the glory 
of the nation. Yet there are only slight traces of Web- 
ster's influence on Lincoln. The man, the voice, the argu- 
ment, seem never to have become landmarks in Lincoln's 
world. Lincoln, like other public men of his generation, 
made a study of Webster. Perhaps no finer and indisput- 
able instance comes down to us of the force of Webster's 
oratorical methods and his style in leading others up to the 
threshold of his own conceptions than is related by Hern- 
don. Indeed, he relates two instances. The first is of 
Lincoln's preparation of his "house divided against 
itself" speech, delivered at Springfield, Illinois, at the 
close of the Republican state convention, which had nomi- 
nated Lincoln as their candidate for United States Senator. 
It has been said that this speech made Mr. Lincoln Presi- 
dent. If its opening paragraph be compared with Web- 
ster's, in the reply to Hayne, the similarity in thought and 
expression becomes apparent. "It may not be amiss to 
note," remarks Herndon, "that in this instance Webster's 
efTort was carefully read by Lincoln and served as his 
model." Again, when late in January, following his elec- 
tion to the presidency, he began the preparation of his 
inaugural address, he made a list of the works which he 
wished to consult. He asked Herndon, who was his law- 
partner and who tells us that his own library was a "respect- 
able collection" of books, "to furnish him with Henry 
Clay's great speech, delivered in 1850; Andrew Jackson's 
proclamation against nullification, and a copy of the Con- 



1789 igoo] WEBSTER; LINCOLN 531 

stitution. He afterward called for Webster's reply to 
Hayne, a speech which he read when he lived at New 
Salem, and which he always regarded as the grandest speci- 
men of American oratory. With these few volumes and 
no further sources, he locked himself up in a room upstairs, 
over a store across the street from the state house, and 
there, cut off from all communication and intrusion, he 
prepared the address. Though composed amid the unro- 
mantic surroundings of a dingy, dusty, and neglected back 
room, the speech has become a memorable document." * 
Given such sources and Abraham Lincoln, the world might 
be entitled to expect an utterance that would rank with the 
wisest and most impressive in American literature. The 
style of the first inaugural, though less simple than that of 
the second, was plainly affected by Webster's in the reply 
to Hayne, just as the Springfield speech of June had been 
three years before. Yet, had Webster and Lincoln known 
each other, they would have felt how irreconcilable were 
many of their fixed convictions. Each was a type of the 
times in which his greatest work was done. Webster stood 
for the property basis of the state; Lincoln, for the basis 
of persons. Webster was admired, but not loved or pro- 
foundly trusted by the people; Lincoln trusted the people, 
and therefore the people trusted him. Yet it was the 
singular fortune of these diverse natures to contribute, the 
one in the reply to Hayne, the other in the Gettysburg ad- 
dress, the longest and the shortest speeches of their kind in 
our history, and also the most famed. Lincoln's is lofty in 
sentiment and faultless in form ; Webster's, less perfect in 
form, is equally lofty in sentiment; but the sentiment 
of each, "dear to every American heart, "is the liberty and 
union of the nation. Of all utterances in America during 
the nineteenth century we would least willingly let these 
two die. We cherish them because they embody the domi- 
nant cause of the age — "whether the new nation, conceived 
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal, can long endure." This was the administra- 
tive question of American democracy in the nineteenth 
century — a question that compelled answer just as the 
*Herndon's Lincoln (Ed. 1889), pp. 400, 478. 



532 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

century had lost its youth and was entering upon its 
responsible manhood ; a question which the America of 
Webster asked, and which, ten years later, the America 
of Lincoln answered. 

It is easier to understand that question and to appreci- 
ate that answer if we follow the evolution of the fran- 
chise during those four and forty years when Webster 
and Lincoln were contemporaries. The United States, in 
1789, when its Constitution was adopted, was a limited 
democracy. So, too, were the commonwealths. They 
continued limited democracies for one generation, but the 
United States for two. The limitation was of the fran- 
chise. Jefferson theorized that a man should vote because 
he is a man. The conservative party administered the 
franchise as the privilege of men who, by long residence, 
if they were not to the manner born, b)'' religious belief, and 
by the possession of property, could be intrusted with so 
valuable a perquisite. 

In the eighteenth century, those who questioned the 
justice of these qualifications were classed as the anarchists 
are classed now. A long residence was necessary to enable 
the elector to understand communal interests. A religious 
qualification was necessary as a deterrent of crime. A 
property qualification was necessary as a safe anchor for the 
state. 

These qualifications limited the electorate, and similar 
qualifications, though more exacting in degree, limited 
candidature. Government was controlled and administered 
by the few. It was government of the few, by the few, 
for the many. Upon the return of America to a peace 
footing, in 1783, a counter-revolution began. A similar 
counter-revolution followed the second war with England, 
the Mexican War, and the Civil War. That counter-revo- 
lution involved the franchise. By 18 10 that counter- 
revolution had nearly obliterated the religious qualifications 
of the right to vote. It did not obliterate a quasi-religious 
test, requiring men to assent to certain declarations, such 
as a "belief in a future state of rewards and punishments" 
before they could serve on juries or be a witness; or "a 
belief in the existence of a Supreme Being" before they 



1789-1900] JEFFERSON 533 

could be eligible to the legislature, the judiciary, or to the 
office of governor. These qualifications, peculiar to the 
southern states from 1835 to 1868, awaited the counter- 
revolution that followed the Civil War, when, save in three 
of the southern states, they were abolished. Franklin, in 
a letter to the Rev. Dr. Price, written from Passy, in 1784,* 
speaking of such a quasi-religious test, at that time required 
by the constitution of Pennsylvania ,t said: "The evil of 
it was the less, as no inhabitant, nor any officer of the gov- 
ernment, except the members of assembly, was obliged to 
make that declaration." 

Jefferson had let loose the idea that was to leaven the 
state. "The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that 
the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, 
are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can 
have authority over such natural rights only as we have 
submitted them. The rights of conscience we never sub- 
mitted — we could not submit. We are answerable for them 
to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend 
to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does 
me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods 
or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. 
If it be said his testimony in a court of justice cannot be 
relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Con- 
straint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, 
but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him 
obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason 
and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error — 
the way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of 
them.":}: This application of these liberal ideas has abol- 
ished religious tests in this country, save in four common- 
wealths, and their constitutions were made a generation 
ago. 

By 1820, the struggle for the franchise was the chief 
issue before the country. In that year the political reform- 
ers in Massachusetts, led by Levi Lincoln, sought to change 

* Ford's Many-Sided Franklin, 149. Also, Franklin to Price, 
October 9, 1780; Sparks, VIII, 505. 

t 1776. 

J Notes on Virginia, Query XVII. 



534 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [i 789-1900 

the basis of representation in the senate of that common- 
wealth from property to persons.* Very distinguished 
were the men who in the Massachusetts constitutional con- 
vention of that year opposed that innovation. Most vener- 
able in years and in service among them was John Adams, 
the author of the constitution which they were called to 
amend. He asserted that the great object of government 
is to make property secure, and quoted freely from classic 
history to show that "by destroying the balance between 
property and numbers, and in consequence, a torrent of 
popular commotion broke in and desolated the Republic 
of Athens." Therefore, to change the basis of represen- 
tation in Massachusetts would cause a like desolation in 
that commonwealth. In these opinions President Adams 
was supported by Justice Story, but by none so ably or so 
successfully as by Webster, who spoke at length on "prop- 
erty the basis of government." So satisfactory was this 
speech to Webster, both in its ideas and in its form, that 
a week after its delivery he incorporated it almost unchanged 
in his Plymouth oration. The world has long been familiar 
with this classic. Some leading passages seem now to 
belong to the political concepts of ancient times. "If the 
nature of our institutions be to found government on pro- 
perty, and that it should look to those who hold property 
for its protection, it is entirely just that property should 
have its due weight and consideration in political arrange- 
ments. Life and personal liberty are no doubt to be pro- 
tected by law; but property is also to be protected by law, 
and is the fund out of which the means for protecting life 
and liberty are usually furn'shed." He therefore concluded 
that property was the just and proper basis of government. 
Against Adams and Story and Webster, Levi Lincoln 
and his political associates spoke in vain, and their propo- 
sitions were rejected. Webster's speech was supposed to 
be unanswerable. The answer slowly came, however, from 
many voices — voices not like his, commanding the ear of 

♦Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Dele- 
gates Chosen to Revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, Begun and 
Holden at Boston, November 15, 1820, and Continued by Adjournment 
to January g, 1821. Reported for the Boston Daily Advertiser. Boston: 
Office at the office of the Daily Advertiser, 1821. 



1789-1900] PROPERTY BASIS ATTACKED 535 

the nation, but such as the world calls obscure and feeble. 
For sixteen years these voices gathered strength. In 1836, 
Webster was paying his respects, as a Senator of the United 
States, to the legislature which had elected him. An 
amendment to the constitution was under discussion as he 
took his seat by the side of the president of the house. A 
Democratic member was making a vigorous attack upon 
the idea that property is the basis of government. Had 
not Webster forever settled that controversy in the conven- 
tion of 1820? Before he left the chamber the amendment 
was adopted by a two-thirds vote, and was ratified by the 
people at the following November election. 

In New York, the struggle for the franchise involved 
the abolition of property qualifications, the shortening of 
the term of residence to become an elector, and the exten- 
sion of the suffrage to persons of color.* Tompkins, then 
fresh from the vice-presidency, in which he had served two 
terms, was president of the convention of 1821, and the 
leader of the party favoring the extension of the franchise. 
It is not wholly correct to construe the extension of the 
suffrage as the characteristic tenet of the party to which he 
belonged. There were Federalists and Democrats who 
opposed the innovation. Such Federalists as Chancellor 
Kent and Rufus King, members of the convention, opposed 
what was then called universal suffrage — that is, a suffrage 
stripped of a property qualification; and they were joined 
by Martin Van Buren, the famous lieutenant of the most 
famous of Democrats of this century. These agreed that 
one branch of the legislature should represent property; 
the other branch, persons. Opposition to the extension of 
the suffrage to persons of color was grounded on fear. The 
admission of the African into the electorate would endanger 
the state. His loyalty could not be relied on. He was 
untrustworthy. Rufus King pointed out an obstacle in the 
way of his exclusion. The Constitution of the United 
States declares, said King, that "the citizens of each state 
shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens 

* Report of Debates and Proceedings (August 28, 1821-November 10, 
1821). New York: L. H. Clarke edition, 1821; Carter & Stone's edition, 
1821. Journal, Albany: Contine & Leake, Printers to the State, 1821, 



536 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

in the several states." In Massachusetts and in New 
Hampshire persons of color enjoyed the privilege of voting. 
So, too, in Vermont. If such a person, a citizen formerly 
of one of these states, moved into New York, became a 
citizen there, paid taxes, and obeyed the laws, how could 
he be excluded from the right to vote? The convention 
replied by inserting in the constitution a clause enabling 
male persons of color, qualified by a three years' residence 
in the state and the possession of property of the value of 
two hundred and fifty dollars, to vote. For a white man 
no property qualification was required, and a residence of 
but one year. The race question had permanently entered 
American politics. Of course only free male persons of 
color were included in the extension of this franchise by any 
of the states. In Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and 
Vermont slavery had been unlawful for nearly half a cen- 
tury. In other northern states it was lawful in 1820. 

Ten years later, in Virginia, the struggle for the fran- 
chise was a forlorn hope in the Richmond co;ivention.* 
Eighty thousand white male inhabitants of the common- 
wealth were disfranchised by the property qualification in 
the constitution of 1776. These non-freeholders found 
expression of their ideas in the resolutions sent up to the 
convention by the non-freeholders of Richmond. Although 
not sympathizing with the spirit of this memorial. Chief 
Justice Marshall, a member of the convention, presented 
it, and afterward voted against its favorable consideration. 
Two ex-Presidents of the United States, James Madison 
and James Monroe, and a future President, John Tyler, 
were also members. They opposed the abolition of the 
freehold qualification for the elector. Like John Adams in 
the Massachusetts convention ten years before, like Kent 
and King in New York, like all the eighteenth-century 
statesmen of America, Madison and Monroe drew their 
premises and their political analogies from the history of 
the Greek and Italian republics. The separation of gov- 
ernment from its true basis, property — and by property 
was meant land — would destroy the state. 

♦Proceedings and Debates, Richmond: 1830; Journal, Richmond; 
1829. 



1789-1900] MADISON: 1830 537 

President Monroe, too feeble in health to continue as 
presiding officer of the convention, made his last public 
utterance an expostulation against the extension of the 
suffrage to non-freeholders. The best evidence of attach- 
ment to the country, he thought, was "some hold in the 
territory itself; some interest in the soil; something that 
we own, not as passengers or voyagers, who have no prop- 
erty in the state, and nothing to bind them to it. The 
object is to give firmness and permanency to our attach- 
ment. And these (that is, property qualifications) are 
the best means by which it may be accomplished. These 
transient passengers may be foreigners. . . . Ours is a 
government of the people, . . . but the whole system is 
as yet an experiment ; it remains to be seen whether such 
a government can be maintained." And he thought the 
extension of the suffrage to non-freeholders too dangerous 
an innovation to risk. The poor man should be induced to 
use exertions which would soon obtain for him the right of 
voting. 

But the man on whose words the convention hung was 
Madison, and he thought that the rights of property and of 
persons were inseparable. Property was reliable ; men were 
not. If universal suffrage were granted, the majority would 
not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority. The 
influential members of the convention supported Marshall, 
Madison, and Monroe. The petitioning non-freeholders 
found no advocate so eloquent as their own memorial. 
They maintained that a man should vote because he is a 
man. The mere ownership of real estate gave no superior 
right to the suffrage. The great charter of American gov- 
ernment declared "that all men by nature are free and equal 
and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they 
enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact 
deprive or divest their posterity." The venerated author of 
the Declaration of Independence and of the act of religious 
freedom had fully set forth the rights of man. Though 
deprived of their political rights, the eighty thousand non- 
freeholders of the commonwealth are subjected to all the 
burdens imposed by it. Though excluded from the polls, 
they were marshaled on the battle-field. Though they 



53^ THE RIGHT TO VOTE [i 789-1900 

could not vote, they were good enough to be summoned to 
the defense of the state and of those within it who exclu- 
sively exercised the right of franchise. 

Experience had not shown that non-freeholders were 
a dangerous class. They were the mechanics and artificers 
in the commonwealth. The denial of the right to vote had 
forced the young men of Virginia to migrate to western 
states, where such restrictions were not tolerated. They 
did not claim that the franchise should be extended to 
women or to free persons of color. Yet the non-freehold- 
ing white men of Virginia were not so favorably situated as 
free persons of color in some of the western states. There- 
fore they thought themselves justly entitled to the right to 
vote. The convention thought otherwise, and the freehold 
qualification continued in Virginia twenty years more. 

The vigorous appeal of the non-freeholders of Richmond 
suggests an explanation of the cause of that political whirl- 
wind which swept over this country at the time of General 
Jackson's election. 

It was called by those who directed the storm "the 
uprising of a free people." It was the political prelude to 
the era of universal suffrage into which the country was 
passing. Democracy is the government of the people, and 
not a government of property. Things must be put out of 
the saddle and man must ride. 

But a serious obstacle was in the way. What shall be 
the law of the franchise in a democracy in which persons 
are also property? Either persons must cease being prop- 
erty or the principles of democracy must be abandoned. 

The brideeless e^ulf between Webster and Lincoln is 
now apparent. Webster believed that government is based 
on property. This doctrine was first abandoned in Web- 
ster's own state and before his own eyes. It never pre- 
vailed in any state west of New York. Proportional popular 
representation has there been made the basis for each branch 
of the legislature. The only difTerence in the basis of the 
two houses is in the size of the districts which the members 
of the respective houses represent. Property is represented 
as much in one as in the other. 

In the former slave-holding states Webster's basis of 



1 789-1900] NORTH CAROLINA: 1835 539 

government affected national politics. When the Consti- 
tution of the United States was framed, Gorham, of Massa- 
chusetts, said that if property voted in the South it should 
vote in the North. The horses and cattle of Massachusetts 
should be counted as well as the slaves of South Carolina. 

Two-fifths of a slave was property, three-fifths was 
person. The anomaly was fatal to the long existence of 
the democracy in which it should prevail. President Mon- 
roe's uncertainty of the perpetuity of the Union in 1830 
was characteristic of the thought of all American statesmen 
till slavery was abolished. 

In 1835, North Carolina, and in 1838, Pennsylvania, in 
revising their eighteenth-century constitutions, were com- 
pelled to consider the extension of the suffrage to free male 
persons of color. Pennsylvania refused the extension. 
North Carolina abolished it, and for the same reason. 
There was no precedent in either state (though this was 
denied at the time by advocates of the extension); the 
state would be overrun by negroes; they were incapable of 
becoming intelligent citizens; social equality could not be 
extended to them, and to extend political equality would 
only precipitate a revolution; they already enjoyed the 
protection of life and property, and were quite as well off 
as they could expect to be. If given the franchise, they 
would become the creatures of designing men, and the state 
would suffer. Michigan, in 1835, though its convention 
unanimously agreed on the clause forbidding slavery, with 
almost equal unanimity refused to extend the franchise to 
free persons of color. Wisconsin, in 1847, after adopting 
an abolition clause, submitted to the electors of the state 
a separate one extending to negroes the right to vote, but 
it was rejected by nearly two votes to one at the polls. 

Illinois, in 18 18, and again in 1848, limited the suffrage 
to white males, though declaring slavery unlawful, and all 
slave indentures void. Ohio, in 1850, pursued a similar 
course, and Indiana, a year later, made it a penal offense 
to encourage negroes or mulattoes to settle in the state; the 
fines accruing to constitute a fund wherewith the state 
might transport such persons of color as would consent to 
go. Tennessee, in 1834, excluded free persons of color as 



540 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [i 789-1900 

possible members of her electorate. The western states 
admitted between 1846 and 1858, Iowa, Wisconsin, Cali- 
fornia, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas — all free states — denied 
the extension of the franchise to the free African. Cali- 
fornia and Oregon inserted clauses in their constitutions 
practically forbidding him to come. The North excluded 
the African from the franchise; the South excluded him 
from freedom. He was property, and save as productive 
property, the hand of man was turned against him.* This 
general condition was held to be morally axiomatic, and 
expressive of the will of God. It was another emphasis of 
the presumptuous doctrine, less heard of in late years than 
formerly — Populi vox, Dei vox. 

Meanwhile other phases of the suffrage were under dis- 
cussion. In 1846, the debate began in New York in favor 
of the extension of the suffrage to women. But so great 
was this innovation that at this time some members of a 
convention of women, many of whom were afterward noted 
for aggressiveness, opposed the election of a woman as its 
presiding officer. Four years later, a resolution, the first 
of its kind, was introduced in the Ohio constitutional 
convention favoring the extension of the suffrage to women. 
It was too unprecedented a resolution to be treated seri- 
ously. Its defenders, seven in number, made no campaign 
in its behalf. In those days, when coeducation was yet a 
proposition, and the same education for girls and boys it 
was prophesied would prove demoralizing, the only speaker 
to the resolution ventured the opinion that women ought to 
have an equal opportunity with men to education, to the 
control of their property, to work and wages, and to the 
franchise. 

The apparently sudden appearance of the woman-suf- 
frage question in American politics, about 1850, is not 
beyond explanation. It has continued to appear in the 
northern states, and for the same reasons. The conditions 
of life in any part of the Union were favorable to its ap- 
pearance at that time. Women equally with man made 
the North what it then was and what it now is. Her toil 

♦See the Constitutional History of the American People, Vol. I, 
Chapter XII, "A People without a Country," 



1789-1900] WOMAN SUFFRAGE 541 

has helped clear off mortgages from the farm; educate the 
children ; carry on business ; manage property ; support 
schools, churches, and newspapers; make social life pos- 
sible; inspire to larger efforts when times of despondency 
have come. Woman as well as man developed the great 
West. There she has shone in all her virtues, and there 
the franchise was first granted to her. 

In how many American homes of to-day are there 
memories of faithful mothers, and equally faithful sisters, 
whose unselfish devotion transformed helpless children into 
self-supporting, self-governing, respected citizens? In 
American democracy woman has demonstrated her capa- 
city. In the North woman participated in nearly all occu- 
pations. She also participated in public affairs; she taught, 
she lectured, she preached, she wrote for newspapers and 
magazines, and occasionally she even wrote books. Her 
writings in 1850 differed widely from her writings at the 
close of the century. It may be said that, like much of 
the literature of that earlier time, she was in the age of 
adjectives. The age of nouns and realism had not come. 
Wars, the severities of climate, hard labor, intemperance, 
and a frontier indifference to the laws of health cut off 
American men. Women, especially in New England, out- 
numbered the men. This portended an economic adjust- 
ment certain to have a political effect, that in the struggle 
for existence woman must compete with woman as well as 
with woman and wife. It was a prophecy of woman's 
industrial freedom, and industrial necessitates political free- 
dom. 

In 1853, in Massachusetts, a petition signed by two 
thousand women of the commonwealth was referred by the 
constitutional convention then in session to its committee 
on the franchise, of which Amasa Walker was chairman.* 
The petition asked for the extension of the suffrage to 
women because they were not represented. The commit- 
tee in its report begged to be excused from considering the 

* Debates and Proceedings in the State Convention, Assembled 
May 4, 1853, to Revise and Amend the Constitution of the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, Vol. I, 434, 726. See, also, the Letters of Silas Stand- 
fast (G. S. Hillard), No. VII, in discussions on the constitution proposed 
by the convention. 



542 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

request. The petition, as far as the committee knew, was 
the first of its kind. Nor would the committee argue the 
case. There were two hundred thousand women in Massa- 
chusetts, of whom but one in a hundred had signed the 
petition. This all women in the state had been free to do. 
That they had not signed was sufficient evidence that they 
did not care to sign. It was the opinion of the committee 
that the women of the state were already duly represented 
by their husbands, their brothers, and their sons. And the 
convention dismissed the petitioners, "having given them 
a careful hearing." 

Meanwhile anti-slavery agitation shook the country. If 
free persons of color could vote in New England and New 
York, was not a free, intelligent white woman, possessing 
property in her own right, as much entitled as a negro to 
that privilege? And those who believed in negro emanci- 
pation in 1850 joined the advocates of woman suffrage. 
Women as discreet as Lucretia Mott, men as bold as John 
Brown, as eloquent as Wendell Phillips, and as persevering 
as William Lloyd Garrison, took up the cause of universal 
suffrage. At the time of Webster's death, and of the 
danger that Abraham Lincoln might be nominated to the 
vice-presidency on a losing ticket, American politics was 
evolving a new phase, and latent in that evolution was the 
impending change in the franchise. 

Webster passed away with that vision before him that 
did "sear his eyeballs." It was the fearful vision which 
had been before him for twenty years — a vision of "the 
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union ; 
states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; a land rent with 
civil feuds, drenched in fraternal blood." His last great 
public utterance, the 7th of March speech, defended slav- 
ery. In principle it applied ideas expressed by him thirty 
years before, that property, not persons, is the basis of 
government, and now his application of the principle tended 
to strengthen slavery. Five years after his death the 
Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott 
decision, carried the political doctrine involved in Webster's 
idea presumptively to its final judicial interpretation. A 
negro was property, not person. He was by nature and 



1789-1900] THE NEGRO: 1860-1865 543 

under the Constitution and the laws a chattel. He bore 
that relation to government which a cart or an ox, a clock 
or a plow bears. By this decision he even lost his claim 
to three-fifths of personality. 

Undoubtedly this decision, more than any other utter- 
ance made by any body of American ofificials down to the 
day of its delivery, stirred the public mind to an examination 
of the elements of American democracy. If this decision 
was true, was there such a thing as a democracy? The word 
was a misnomer. All white men were slave-catchers, and 
all slaves were mere personal property. The nation at 
once detected the moral incongruity of the decision. In 
the court of the national conscience it was reversed, and 
its legal effect was soon cut short by the sword. 

The war was essentially a contest between two indus- 
trial systems, the one of free citizens, the other of slave 
labor. Lincoln declared himself willing to retain or abolish 
slavery, in whole or in part, if thereby he could save the 
Union. His flexibility on the subject seems now almost 
proof of weakness, but one must not forget that we live 
after the abolition of slavery, and that our political horizon 
circumvents a different world than that upon which Lincoln 
looked in 1861. 

The results of emancipation may well cause us to doubt 
whether the Union could have been preserved in any other 
way. Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation by his 
authority as commander-in-chief of the armies and navies 
of the United States. It was "an act of justice and of 
military necessity." It carried war into Africa, but it con- 
veyed no political privileges upon the enfranchised. Politi- 
cal privileges are granted only by the states. The right to 
vote, it is admitted by all who emphasize the national 
character of our government, emanates from the states; 
though many insist that the right should emanate only 
from the United States. Confusion on this fundamental 
question remains an obstacle to good government in this 
country. 

As the national army restored civil order in the southern 
states, opportunity came for the reconstruction of their 
governments. This occurred in Louisiana in 1864, when its 



544 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

loyal people elected Michael Hahn governor. On the 13th 
of March of that year President Lincoln wrote congratulat- 
ing him on having fixed his name in history as the first free 
state governor of Louisiana: "Now you are about to have 
a convention, which, among other things, will probably 
define the elective franchise. I barely suggest, for your 
private consideration, whether some of the colored people 
may not be let in; for instance, the very intelligent, and 
especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. 
They would probably help in some trying time to come to 
keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. But 
this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you 
alone." 

This was one of the first suggestions from the President 
that in the reconstruction of the insurrectionary states the 
franchise should be extended to the negro. In response 
to this suggestion, the Louisiana convention of 1864, amidst 
stormy sessions, kept in order with difficulty by its presi- 
dent with the ceaseless co-operation of the sergeant-at- 
arms, abolished slavery, and empowered the legislature to 
extend the suffrage "to such other persons, citizens of the 
United States, as by military service, by taxation to sup- 
port the government, or by intellectual fitness may be 
deemed entitled thereto," thus embodying the President's 
suggestion. 

With the cessation of hostilities, other states attempted 
the work of reconstruction. Of these, all excepting Louisi- 
ana refused to extend political rights to the negro. South 
Carolina not only denied them political rights, but refused 
to include them in the apportionment of representation, and 
based apportionment wholly on the whites. By the appli- 
cation of the idea that the right to vote emanates from the 
state, four millions of persons, comprising more than three- 
quarters of a million of men twenty-one years of age and 
over, were excluded from political rights and from repre- 
sentation. The race problem thus assumed a new political 
cast, and culminated in that counter-revolution which fol- 
lowed the Civil War. 

On the 15th of August, 1865, President Johnson wrote 
to the provisional governor of Mississippi, W. L. Sharkey: 



17S9-1900] MISSISSIPPI: 1865 545 

"If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons 
of color who can read the Constitution of the United States 
in English and write their names, and to all persons of color 
who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred 
and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, you would com- 
pletely disarm the adversary and set an example the other 
states would follow. This you can do with perfect safety, 
in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis 
with the free states." * Mississippi declined to follow the 
suggestion, though, very curiously, just twenty-five years 
later the state followed it almost literally, but for a wholly 
different purpose. 

A struggle over the franchise thus began between the 
Confederate states and Congress, and all the constitutions 
made in the convention of 1865 were declared by Congress 
to be illegal and void. The reconstruction acts of 1867, 
which affirmed that illegality, provided that upon taking 
the oath of allegiance and having been duly registered, the 
qualified electors in the designated Confederate states — 
Virginia being subject to a special act — might elect dele- 
gates to constitutional conventions. Each of these could 
then frame a supreme law for the state in which it was 
elected, which, if approved by Congress, should become 
the state constitution. The condition imposed was the 
ratification of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, which 
contemplated the extension of the right to vote to all quali- 
fied persons, irrespective of race, color, or previous condition 
of servitude. Thus the national government compelled the 
Confederate states to extend the franchise to the colored 
race, and to include them in the apportionment of repre- 
sentation. The extension was not willingly made by the 
South. In each of the reconstruction conventions of 1868, 
except in South Carolina, a firm protest was made. The 
protest in Arkansas was typical of the feeling then existing 
throughout the South. The inevitable result of the exten- 
sion of the suffrage to the negro — so ran this protestf — ^ 

* Senate Ex. Doc, No. 26, 3gth Congress, first session, p. 229. 

t Minority Report of Committee on Election Franchise, February 6, 
1868; Debates and Proceedings of the Arkansas Constitutional Conven- 
tion, 514. 



546 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [i 789-1900 

"would be the overthrow of the white man's government 
of our fathers, and an erection of an Africanized govern- 
ment in its stead. The negro is not the equal of the white 
man. In mind and body the differences are striking, 
numerous, and insurmountable. Four thousand years ago 
he was exactly what he is to-day. All history demonstrates 
his utter incapacity for self-government, and his utter want 
of appreciation of free institutions. But beyond all this, 
our own experience and the teachings of history inexorably 
point to this dreadful result. The investing of an inferior 
race with social and political equality is the stepping-stone 
to miscegenation, and the consequent utter deterioration 
and degeneracy of the dominant race. It cannot be denied 
that political equality (politically that equality resulting 
from the indiscriminate exercise of the elective franchise) 
will result in social equality, unless, in the throes and con- 
flicts which will inevitably precede the new order of things, 
one or the other of the races does not perish from the earth. 
So marked and odious a change can be only effected after 
the natural and God-given prejudices of our race have 
ceased to exist. Peace and prosperity can never result 
from measures so utterly at war with the instincts and fears 
of the white people of this state, whilst the investing [of] 
the negro Avith the elective franchise is attended with so 
many dangers and objections." The protestants could not 
believe that it would "be the means of shielding the colored 
man from oppression or wrong," but would "only aggra- 
vate and increase the prejudices of race and precipitate a 
civil and social war." 

That no expression of this kind came from South Caro- 
lina was because its second reconstruction convention was 
composed chiefly of colored men. In Charleston, in 1868, 
where eight years before a convention composed of white 
men only, masters of slaves, had declared the dissolution 
of the Union, there assembled now another convention, to 
which some who until a short time before had been slaves 
were delegates. By the law of the land their former masters 
were disfranchised and declared incapable either of belong- 
ing to the convention or of expressing any opinion of its 
work by their ballots. 



1789-1900] SOUTH CAROLINA: 1868 547 

Never before was there so startling a change in a de- 
mocracy, the former slave making the supreme law for the 
commonwealth. Orr, an ex-speaker of the national House 
of Representatives, and an active member of the secession 
convention of i860, now provisionally governor, and declar- 
ing himself henceforth a Union man, addressed the conven- 
tion, and urged its members to be magnanimous, to provide 
for public education and to prescribe educational qualifica- 
tion. He told them that they did not represent the intel- 
ligence, wealth, or virtue of South Carolina, and that they 
did not possess the confidence of its people — meaning the 
white population. He might have added that were it not 
for the national troops patrolling the state and guarding 
the convention, the white inhabitants of the commonwealth 
would quickly have dispersed the delegates (nicknamed 
"the- menagerie" by the whites) at the point of the bay- 
onet. But this he did not say. The convention com- 
pleted its work in peace, and the constitution which it 
framed continued the supreme law of South Carolina 
until 1896. The suggestions of the governor respecting 
education and magnanimity were carefully followed, but 
no educational qualification was required of the elector. 
One was proposed, and discussed at length, but the dele- 
gates took their stand on the proposed Fourteenth 
Amendment, on the reconstruction acts of Congress, and 
on their personal fears. One member epitomized all ob- 
jections; the colored race had been disfranchised two 
hundred and fifty years in America, and now negroes 
were going to vote.* 

The history of South Carolina since 1868, and its later 
apportionment, especially in the notorious gerrymander of 
the First and Seventh, or "tide-water," districts, emphasize 
one interpretation of Franklin's major premise in govern- 
ment — that the constitution of a state is determined not by 
its language, but by its administration. 

Congress finally approved the constitutions of 1868 
submitted by the southern states, and soon after admitted 
their Senators and Representatives. A "civil and social 

*See Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of South Caro- 
lina, January 14-March 17, 1868, Charleston, 2 vols. Charleston: 1868. 



548 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [i 789-1 900 

war" had followed. But the struggle for the franchise was 
not over in the South. In 1890, Mississippi promulgated 
a new constitution; the openly avowed purpose in making 
which was to disfranchise the negro and to secure white 
supremacy forever in the state. 

Several plans were submitted: a plural suffrage, based 
upon property; a property qualification of two hundred 
and fifty dollars; an educational qualification like that pro- 
posed in 1865 by President Johnson, save that the consti- 
tution to be read should be the constitution of Mississippi; 
total exclusion of the African race from the suffrage, and 
the proportional relinquishment of representation by the 
state in Congress; and woman suffrage. 

During the debate on the suffrage, Judge Crisman said 
to the convention: "It is no secret that there has not 
been a full vote and a fair count in Mississippi since 1875 — 
that we have been preserving the ascendency of the white 
people by revolutionary methods. We have been stuffing 
ballot-boxes, committing perjury, and here and there carry- 
ing elections by fraud and violence, until the whole machin- 
ery for elections was about to rot down." A property 
qualification was rejected because it would disqualify as 
many whites as blacks. An educational qualification was 
adopted, after much opposition: on and after the first day 
of January, 1892, every elector, in addition to the qualifi- 
cations of registration, of poll-tax payments as proved by 
a receipt, of age and residence, "shall be able to read any 
section of the constitution of this state, or shall be able to 
understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable 
interpretation thereof." * The election officer who should 
decide on the reasonableness of the interpretation was to 
be appointed by the governor. 

Public opinion condemned this clause at the time of its 
presentation, but the convention adopted it, and it escaped 
defeat largely because the constitution was not submitted 
to a popular vote. 

* Daily Clarion- Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi. September 9, 1890, 
and editorials in same, September iith and 12th. At this time there 
were 110,113 white and 130,607 colored electors in the state. See table, 
Clarion- Ledger, August 18, 1890. 



I7S9-1900] MISSISSIPPI: 1896 549 

The extension of the suffrage to women* was seriously 
discussed with the understanding that it would increase the 
white vote in the state thirty thousand. The objections 
to the innovation in Mississippi were characteristic of pre- 
vailing social sentiments. The ballot-box, it was said, 
would humiliate women ; election scenes in Mississippi were 
too disgusting even for men. Woman suffrage was an ugly 
heresy, repulsive to southern chivalry. It would be a cor- 
ruption of women. Let it be left for coarser and more 
vulgar states; it should not blot the fair name of Missis- 
sippi. The white women of the state did not want it, and 
in estimating the possible advantages to be derived from 
it, a few stubborn facts ought not to be forgotten. There 
were eighty-five thousand more colored than white females 
in Mississippi, of whom no small portion possessed property 
and could read and write. Every colored woman, qualified 
to vote, would surely vote, while thousands of white women 
could not be induced to mingle with the masses of men and 
women, white and black, in the ugly duties of voting. 

The suffragists replied to these arguments that it would 
be no more degrading for white women to be granted the 
franchise along with the black women than to stand power- 
less by their side, with insane persons, idiots, and Indians 
not taxed, with which motley crowd the women of the 
state, by its suffrage laws, were identified. To the objec- 
tion that women had not asked for the suffrage, it was 
answered that neither was there any record of her asking 
to be accorded the right of controlling her own property; 
nor that the father of her children, lawful or baseborn, 
should be compelled to aid in their support; nor that the 
infamous law permitting a man to whip his wife with a rod 
not larger than his thumb should be repealed ; but that 
there was no doubt of her sentiments on these subjects. 
To claim that if women were allowed to vote, the negro 
women would avail themselves of it more freely than the 
white, was a poor compliment to civilized Saxon women; 
it was asserting that they were less interested in affairs of 

*For the debates and current opinions on woman suffrage at this 
time, see the Clarion-Ledger for August 21, 25, 28, 30; September i, 8, 9, 
10, II, 22, 25, iBqo. 



550 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

government than those daughters of ignorance and barbar- 
ism. It had been said, too, that if woman was granted 
political rights, she would be compelled to perform military 
duties, which was an aspersion upon her who, at the peril 
of her life, brought forth noble sons. These could be 
relied on for repaying that debt by fighting for her. 

An influential journal in the state declared that the 
introduction and consideration of a clause in favor of woman 
suffrage had weakened public confidence in the ability of 
the convention to grapple successfully with the grave prob- 
lems before it, chief of which was the franchise. The 
extension of the suffrage to woman as a means of maintain- 
ing white supremacy in the state was declared to be a dernier 
resort, a sacrifice made on the ground that the end justifies 
the means and that necessity knows no law. Could not the 
white men of the state maintain that supremacy alone? 

In other commonwealths woman suffrage had been 
advocated and adopted as a means for repressing vice and 
immorality; for securing the control or the prohibition of 
the liquor traffic; for obtaining equal wages for equal work; 
for admitting woman to industrial and professional oppor- 
tunities equal to those open to men. In Mississippi the 
principal argument for her admission to the body of voters 
was, as a last resort, to maintain white supremacy — an 
argument which was abandoned when, upon examination 
of the census, it was discovered that her admission would 
not secure this result. It was asked at the time whether, 
had there been more white than black women in the state, 
would woman suffrage have been adopted? 

With the extension of the suffrage to all persons, irre- 
spective of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, 
other critical modifications of electoral qualifications were 
made. The Fourteenth Amendment to the national Con- 
stitution obliterated the word "white" from the state con- 
stitutions. At the time of its adoption only six states 
had conferred the franchise on persons of color. Congress, 
with absolute authority over the District of Columbia, had 
never conferred it. The Wade and Davis bill, the only 
congressional plan for reconstruction in 1866, did not 
include negro suffrage. The extension of the suffrage to 



1 789-1900] WOMAN SUFFRAGE 551 

the African was in obedience to grinding necessity — the 
necessity, eloquently expressed by President Lincoln, of 
the help of the negro, "in some trying time to come, 
to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." 

From i860 to 1890, the qualifications of the electors in 
this country were further modified in many of the common- 
wealths by the requirement of registration for voters, by 
requiring an educational qualification in three states, and by 
reducing the time required to gain a legal residence in nearly 
all. This reduction of the required term of residence was 
in response to the interstate competition for immigrants. 
If Michigan required two years and Wisconsin but one, 
immigrants would pass on to Wisconsin. In the eighteenth 
century twenty-one years were required in which to gain a 
residence. At the close of the nineteenth century it does 
not require half as many minutes, for in fourteen states a 
man who declares his intention of becoming a citizen may 
vote. Efforts have been made to disfranchise electors for 
drunkenness, for gambling, for horse-racing, and for grossly 
immoral conduct. The disfranchised by law are minors, 
idiots, insane, bribe-makers and bribe-takers, duellists, per- 
sons convicted of crimes, Indians not taxed, and in most 
of the states, women. 

From 1850 to 1890 was a time of woman suffrage agi- 
tation. In eighteen states, including two of which were 
formerly slave-holding — Louisiana and Tennessee — women 
were declared to be eligible to school ofSces. In several of 
these eighteen she was authorized to vote on specific ques- 
tions or in particular elections — such as a school question 
and in municipal elections. The agitation was most vigor- 
ous in 1889, when six new states framed their constitutions, 
and again in 1890, when two old states, Kentucky and 
Mississippi, made new ones. 

It has been the tactics of the woman suffragists to incor- 
porate a direct grant of the suffrage to woman in a constitu- 
tional provision, or to incorporate a clause empowering the 
state legislature to extend the suffrage to her at any time, 
or to submit a constitutional amendment for that purpose 
to the people. The first method succeeded in Wyoming; 
the second, in Idaho ; the third, in North Dakota. 



552 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

When, in 1853, Amasa Walker's committee begged to 
be excused from considering so novel a proposition as 
woman suffrage, probably no white woman had ever seen 
that region of our country now called Wyoming. It was 
organized as a territory in 1868, and upon its admission 
into the Union, twenty-one years later, it declared, in its 
bill of rights, that — 

"Since equality in the enjoyment of natural and civil 
rights is made sure only through political equality, the laws 
of this state affecting the political rights and privileges of 
its citizens shall be without distinction of race, color, sex, 
or any circumstance or condition whatsoever other than 
individual incompetency or unworthiness duly ascertained 
by a court of competent jurisdiction" ; and in its article on 
the franchise : 

''The rights of the citizens of the state of Wyoming to 
vote and hold ofifice shall not be denied or abridged on 
account of sex. Both male and female citizens of this 
state shall equally enjoy all civil, political, and religious 
rights and privileges." 

These constitutional provisions received an administra- 
tive definition in a concurrent resolution passed unanimously 
by the Wyoming house of representatives, just before 
adjourning in 1893,* a resolution which is the very ecstasy 
of propagandism. These resolutions declared that- the 
possession and the exercise of the suffrage by the women 
of Wyoming for a quarter of a century had wrought no 
harm, but had done great good in many ways. It had 
largely aided in banishing crime, pauperism, and vice from 
the state, and had accomplished this without any violent 
or oppressive legislation ; it had secured peaceful and 
orderly elections, good government, and a remarkable 
degree of civilization and public order. After twenty-five 
years of woman suffrage, the legislature pointed with pride 
to the facts that not a county in Wyoming had a poor- 
house, that its jails were almost empty, and that crime, 
except that committed by strangers in the state, was almost 
unknown. As the result of this experience, every civilized 
community was urged to enfranchise its women without 

* Broadside copy of the resolution, 1893. 



1789-1900] WOMAN SUFFRAGE 553 

delay. A copy of the resolutions was sent to the governor 
of the state, to the legislature of every state and territory 
in this country, and to every legislative body in the world. 
The press in every country was requested to call the atten- 
tion of its readers to the resolutions. 

One of the three Republican presidential electors of 
Wyoming in 1896 was a woman. The woman suffrage 
agitators in New England and New York in 1846 had not 
anticipated so much as this. A few women who began the 
woman suffrage movement survived the half-century of 
agitation. Rarely has so significant a social and political 
change occurred within the lifetime of those who first 
demanded it. 

The objections to woman suffrage and the arguments 
for it in Mississippi in 1890, and the concurrent resolutions 
of the Wyoming legislature in 1893, are perhaps equally 
suggestive of the character of the whole struggle for the 
franchise in this country, which in the nineteenth century, 
won two imperial domains — the extension of the franchise 
"to all persons, irrespective of race, color, or previous con- 
dition of servitude; and the extension of the franchise to 
women." The first was done by the nation as an act of 
justice and of military necessity, "to keep the jewel of lib- 
erty in the family of freedom"; the second was done by 
the commonwealths as a necessary political recognition 
of an economic condition. 

Some one may inquire whether the enthusiastic resolu- 
tion of the Wyoming legislature on woman suffrage was a 
new voice in the world, or only the echo of similar resolu- 
tions in political platforms of a generation earlier, when 
negro suffrage was the propagandism of political optimists. 
Has negro suffrage solved the race problem? Will woman 
suffrage solve the social problem? Experience has not yet 
answered. The franchise device has not been suffered to 
work perfectly in all parts of the country. 

During the struggle for the franchise, from the Revolu- 
^tion to the compromise of 1850, religious and property 
qualifications were nearly all abolished ; the time required 
to gain a legal residence to vote was the time required to 
make a declaration of intention to vote; educational and 



554 THE RIGHT TO VOTE [1789-1900 

poll-tax qualifications did not meet with popular approval; 
ret^istration for voting was inau<^urated. 

The basis of government by public consent shifted from 
property to persons, Jefferson's ideas of manhood suffrage 
steadily gained ground. Hamilton's idea of identifying 
the interests of the citizens with the interests of the national 
government preserved the Union, as it had made the Union 
possible. Webster's great speeches placed American insti- 
tutions for the first time in the world's literature. Experi- 
ence demonstrated Franklin's wisdom in affirming that the 
test of a government is its administration. 

The struggle for the franchise was one for the more 
perfect union, inasmuch as it justly increased the sovereign 
American electorate. The fact of the nation rested on the 
recognition of universal suffrage. 

And what meant universal suffrage? That every person 
of sound mind, and of the age which common custom fixes 
as the time test of responsibility, should freely, fully, 
potently express his ideas for his own and for the general 
welfare. To enfranchise man is to give liberty to the mind, 
and to let the world have the benefit of ideas. Nations 
rest upon men ; men upon ideas. The franchise is a political 
device by which ideas may be known, counted, weighed, and 
applied. In the evolution of government we are now in 
the franchise process. The device is practicable, and when 
fairly used, serves a large purpose in democracy. But on 
the last analysis it is only a device. The grand purpose 
in the struggle for the franchise is not to win a piece of 
political mechanism, but to win freedom of thought and 
political morality — to establish the republic of ideas. The 
device itself is the political compliment which in the evolu- 
tion of democracy is paid to the thoughtless. The apology 
for the device declares that its extension tends to make 
men and women thoughtful. While the laws regulating the 
elective franchise were becoming more liberal, the subjects 
of these laws, the people, were overspreading the country 
and transforming it into a settled area. Their migration had 
much to do with the forms of local government set up. In 
the next chapter we will follow them in their migration. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

THE HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION 

1 800-1 900 

The history of men is largely of their migrations, which 
in ancient times were of tribes and nations; in modern, 
of individuals and ideas. No undiscovered countries 
remain ; nations, like the Teutons of old, no longer forsake 
their ancestral homes to make new ones in the wilderness, 
or in a conquered country. Henceforth it is ideas that 
migrate. Systems of thought, political concepts, laws, 
municipal rules, customs, and constitutions, wander as it 
were, from commonwealth to commonwealth, and less 
frequently and less obviously, from nation to nation. 
Though the world is now mostly private property, ideas 
migrate more freely than ever before. Peace and progress 
are gradually reducing the tariff on ideas. 

The migrations of tribes and races in early times in 
Europe have long been the study of sociologists; similar 
migrations in America have scarcely attracted attention, 
though these afford abundant and authentic data for our 
consideration. Perhaps the neglect of them by sociologists 
is another illustration that human institutions which are 
most remote and obscure are easiest understood. An 
exhaustive census, made by national and state authorities 
for a hundred years, supplemented by a vast mass of county, 
municipal, and private records, and the records of many 
institutions and societies, are material for the study of the 
social and political institutions of this country. If such a 
mass of evidence existed for primitive or mediaeval times 
in Europe and Asia, it would be cherished and pondered by 
sociologists as part of the choicest inheritance of the ages. 
Within our own country there has been presented, within 
the short space of a hundred years, a spectacle unparalleled 
in history. A composite population, increasing from less 

555 



556 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1900 

than four millions to more than seventy, took up the con- 
tinent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Great Lakes 
to the Rio Grande, and at the close of the century entered 
upon the exploitation of Alaska; an area of operations 
extending over nearly four millions of square miles of terri- 
tory. 

They swiftly displaced and nearly obliterated the native 
races, which, unsurpassed in fighting qualities, at the time 
when the migration of the conquering race began twice 
exceeded in numbers the voting population of the United 
States. They organized forty-five commonwealths, each 
governed by a written constitution and written laws. Of 
one hundred and fifty-two constitutions proposed, thirty- 
eight were rejected by the people. During this century of 
migration, the laws accumulated in more than three thou- 
sand printed volumes, and also a body of interpretation, in 
an equal number of judicial reports. At the beginning 
of this migration, one person in thirty dwelt in a city; a 
century later, one in three dwelt there. More than fifteen 
millions, alien-born, merged with the native stock, and at 
the close of the century this alien accession comprised one- 
seventh of the population. An unparalleled political en- 
franchisement extended the right to vote, which in 1796 
reposed in only one-twentieth of the population, but a cen- 
tury later, in one-sixth of it — the nearest approach to 
universal suffrage in history. At the beginning of this 
migration, one-sixth of the population consisted of a race 
stolen from another continent and held in slavery; a cen- 
tury later this race constituted one-sixth of the population, 
and by the supreme law of the land was entitled to all the 
civil and political rights and immunities of citizens; a 
change unique in human experience. Nor were these 
changes all. The lines of migration, which for the greater 
part of the century ran only east and west, changed their 
course during the last thirty years of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, till they ran freely from state to state in all directions. 
No longer was migration to be under political duress; the 
courses of thought and travel and trade were to run un- 
vexed. Native and foreign born alike at last had the 
country before them wherein to choose their homes. This 



1800-1900J FOREIGN IMMIGRATION BEGINS 557 

freedom of choice was unparalleled in human history. 
But these unique features of American civilization, and all 
that they imply, were after all only phases in a social evo- 
lution. 

The population of the American colonies was scattered 
along bays and rivers; the highlands remained a wilderness. 
Rather than take up a highland farm, a family migrated to 
a more remote valley. Thus the Berkshire Hills were 
passed by emigrants from the Connecticut Valley, who set- 
tled along the Hudson and the Mohawk. The tide-water 
region was first occupied, and it still remains the most 
populous part of the country. By the middle of the eight- 
eenth century, colonization ceased, and immigration also, 
and seventy years slipped by before immigration started 
again. This period, from the days when the capture of 
the French stronghold, Louisburg, by the New England 
militia was recent news, to the days of the Missouri Com- 
promise, was the procreative age of American institutions. 
Men and things became distinctively American, and the 
native stock gained permanent control of the political des- 
tiny of the country. It was the one period of our native 
Americanism. Our political institutions were then molded 
by native hands. The colonies became commonwealths; 
the confederation a nation, whose supreme law was anchored 
to native ideas and was strengthened by Anglo-Saxon prece- 
dents. At the expiration of this seventy years, population 
had overrun the original area of the Union; had founded 
two states across the Mississippi, and was demanding the 
rich Indian lands along the Red River, the Missouri, and 
the Platte. 

Foreign immigration then began ; yet in ten years after 
the admission of Missouri not more than one hundred and 
fifty thousand foreigners arrived.* During the next decade 
half a million came,f and in the following, nearly eighteen 
hundred thousand. :{; About two and a half millions thus 
merged with the native stock, and men of foreign birth 
began to figure in our civil affairs. The state legislatures 

* 1 820- 1 830. 
1 1 830- 1 840. 
J 1840-1850. 



558 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1900 

and Congress were most accessible to them ; a few were 
chosen delegates to constitutional conventions; many 
served in local offices. But they were usually more Ameri- 
can than the Americans.* They knew little — usually noth- 
ing — of European methods; they had sentiment, but little 
love for the old country. The whole body of officials of 
foreign birth in the country, therefore, tended to intensify 
native Americanism and to continue the eighteenth-century 
character of our institutions. 

Toward the close of the nineteenth century, the extent 
to which naturalized citizens were chosen to office was 
probably best illustrated in the membership of Congress. 
In the fifty-third, f three Senators and twenty-one Repre- 
sentatives were foreign born. One of the Senators from 
Florida and Nebraska was of English birth; one from 
Michigan, of Canadian. The House, consisting of three 
hundred and fifty-six members, included seven natives of 
Ireland, five of whom were from New York; one came 
from Pennsylvania, and one from Michigan; four natives 
of Germany came — one from Minnesota, one from Mis- 
souri, and two from Wisconsin ; two natives of Canada 
came — one from Indiana and one from Ohio; two of New 
Brunswick — one from Kansas, one from Michigan; one of 
Ontario, from Minnesota; one of Scotland, from Iowa; one 
of Austria, from Illinois; one of Hungary, from Nebraska; 
one of Norway, from Minnesota; one of England, the 
Speaker, Charles F. Crisp, from Georgia; and one, born a 
slave, from South Carolina. There have been thirty-two 
speakers of the House. Mr. Crisp was the only one of 
foreign birth. 

Nearly all these naturalized citizens who became mem- 
bers of the fifty-third Congress came to this country in 
early childhood in the great migration that followed the 
European revolutions of 1848. It is worthy of notice that 
they were chosen in northern states, chiefly in the old 
Northwest, where a vigorous foreign stock largely controls 

* For an account of the extent and influence of this native Ameri- 
canism, see my Constitutional History of the American People, Vol. I, 
Chapters II. Ill, VII, XIII, XV; Vol. II, Chapters I, V, IX, XV. 

I Convened Decembers, 1892. 



i§oo-i9oo] FROM STATE TO STATE 559 

politics. Seldom did a southern state send a naturalized 
citizen to Congress. Speaker Crisp's career may be said 
to have been without a parallel in the South. There, 
native Americanism has ever been a dominant, if not a 
commonly recognized power, much as it has been in New 
England. In the South, it was engendered largely by 
racial preferences; in New England, by class distinctions 
and racial prejudices. With the disappearance of the New 
Englander from New England the distinctions there gradu- 
ally broke down, and probably the time is at hand when a 
native of Canada or Ireland may represent a New England 
district. This augurs that public servants of foreign birth 
are likely to increase during the first half of the twentieth 
century, and approximate that proportion which the foreign- 
born population bears to the native-born. 

From 1776 to 182 i the southern states adopted twelve 
constitutions, and the northern seventeen. The men who 
made them, with few exceptions, were native-born or citi- 
zens at the time of the Revolution. They were like the 
people for whom the instruments were made. While yet 
the smoke of the battle of Yorktown was hanging on the 
horizon, migration set in, westward, from the Carolinas into 
Tennessee, from Virginia into Kentucky, and from New 
England, New York, and Pennsylvania into the region 
soon to be known as Ohio. Thither along the river also 
came many from Virginia and Kentucky. The effect of 
this first migration from the old states was the admission 
of Kentucky in 1792, of Tennessee in 1796, and of Ohio 
in 1802. The veterans of the Revolution were largely paid 
in land-scrip, which many of them sold for a trifle. The 
first clamor for public lands then began, but was partly 
smothered for ten years by the presence of powerful and 
hostile tribes along the frontier — the Creeks, Choctaws, and 
Chickasaws in the southwest; in the northwest the feebler 
tribes that had gathered under Pontiac, and soon were to 
gather under Tecumseh. For ten years the tribes north 
of the Ohio struggled to hold their lands. Behind the little 
army under Harrison was the impatient mass of immigrants 
waiting to rush in when victory came, and to take up the 
conquered territory. 



560 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1900 

In 181 1 victory came at Tippecanoe, and two years 
later at the Thames. Then the flood of population poured 
in and changed the wilderness to states. Indiana was 
admitted in 1816, Illinois in 1818, Mississippi in 1817, 
Alabama in 18 19; for Jackson had done for the southwest 
what Harrison had done for the northwest. They had 
their reward; the people were grateful, and for once had 
long memories. Jackson and Harrison were the first pre- 
eminently popular men of the nineteenth century. Their 
services in opening up the West won each the presidency 
and a popularity that continued till death. Indeed, their 
popularity has invaded posterity, although few in our day 
would be able to explain the cause. It was like the popu- 
larity that attended Fremont, * ' the Pathfinder, ' ' and Custer, 
the Indian fighter, in later times. Just ahead of popula- 
tion, as it has moved westward, there have arisen great 
leaders and popular heroes who have aided the millions 
who were seeking homes in the Indian country. It was 
because he stood for a great moral migration that Lincoln 
became the most popular man of the century. He, it will 
be remembered, was a product of the frontier, though in 
our day his biographers are quite given to emphasizing that 
the West which knew Lincoln and which Lincoln knew was 
of quite as settled a character as the older East, The his- 
tory of the frontier is a principal chapter in American 
politics. 

The acquisition of the Louisiana country made the 
United States a continental power, a peer among the 
nations, and the paradise of the surplus population of 
Europe. Discriminating legislation alone prevented its 
becoming another flowery kingdom. Louisiana, admitted 
in 18 12, comprised at that time a few old French settle- 
ments and the advance-guard of a heavy migration from 
Kentucky and Tennessee, with a few pioneers from the 
Carolinas, Georgia, and the Floridas. The second decade 
of the century was over when population was converging 
in the Missouri territory about St. Louis. As yet the 
movement was principally over waterways, of which the 
chief was the Ohio River. Missouri was admitted in 1821. 
Maine, associated with it for political reasons, had been 



iSoo-iQoo] SLAVERY EXTENSION 561 

admitted in 1820. When in 18 12 Jackson and Harrison 
had broken up the tribes which yet remained east of the 
Mississippi, it was supposed that the day was far distant 
when immigration would seek to cross that river; but the 
tribes were no sooner transported into what was called the 
Indian country than, though its possession had been guaran- 
teed to the Indians by treaty, the restless and aggressive 
frontiersmen demanded lands along the Missouri. 

The admission of Missouri was followed by another 
decade of wrestling with the Indians, and population gradu- 
ally crept along the banks of the western tributaries of the 
Mississippi. Arkansas was admitted in 1836, with a popu- 
lation chiefly derived from the adjoining states. Michigan 
followed the next year, with a population almost wholly 
from New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, though with 
many from New England. Less than half a million foreign- 
born were in the United States at this time, and few of 
these were found as far west as Michigan or Missouri, and 
none as far to the southwest as Arkansas They located 
chiefly in the old states of the North, Most of them went 
to the large cities and towns and engaged in the new indus- 
trial enterprises of the country, thus supplying our first 
imported skilled labor. The pressure of population was 
not sufficient yet to force these newcomers to take up the 
public lands. A struggle for land, lasting ten years, fol- 
lowed the admission of Arkansas and Michigan, and was 
intensified by the passion for slavery extension. Texas 
and the California country were coveted for slavery as a 
balance to the vast region north and northwest of Mis- 
souri. Foreign and native immigration in the North, and 
slavery extension in the South, were the forces contesting 
for the possession of the field. Again there was a truce. 
Florida and Texas were admitted in 1845, Iowa in 1846, 
and Wisconsin in 1848. The races were again up to the 
frontier, and they faced the heart of the country apparently 
with equal chances. 

But the free states exceeded the slave in population, 
and the excess had always given them a majority of the 
members of the House. In 1790 the majority was five; in 
1820, twenty-three; in 1848, forty-eight. Not as yet was 



562 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1900 

there a solid North. The population of the new states 
plainly showed the course of ideas. The people of Texas 
were mostly from Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, with Spanish- 
Mexicans, but no immigrants from Europe. Iowa and 
Wisconsin were settled from New England, the middle 
states, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, with a few from Michi- 
gan. From 1841 to 1850 above seventeen hundred thou- 
sand aliens arrived, and a large number of these, by means 
of the trunk lines then in effective service for the first time, 
immediately passed on to Iowa and Wisconsin. In this 
migration was a strong German element. As the middle 
of the century was reached, population reached the middle 
of the continent. To the west of New England, New 
York, and Pennsylvania was a group of young states reflect- 
ing the institutions of the elder; it was, in a sense. New 
England from Cape Cod to the Nebraska Territory, and 
the Old Dominion from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. 
Thus far the chief motive in migration had been cheap land, 
for farms in the North, for plantations in the South. 

Suddenly the news of the discovery of gold in Califor- 
nia passed through the land. At a bound the frontier 
moved from the banks of the Missouri and the Rio Grande to 
the banks of the Sacramento, thirteen hundred miles. In 
less than two years two hundred thousand men were there, 
representing every country, every state, every territory. 
Gold was reported in other parts of the California country, 
and before the new half-century began, California was a 
state, and Utah and New Mexico territories. Population 
was diverted from its established courses. Instead of push- 
ing farther into the valley of the Missouri, it turned that 
region into bridle-paths and sought the Pacific slope. 

No state was in political readiness to be admitted with 
California. It came alone, suddenly, a free state, created 
from the wilderness without territorial probation. If Con- 
gress refused to admit it, the California country — which 
was a region more than ten times larger than New York — 
might declare its independence and form a rival republic. 

The northern and southern streams of population first 
met north of the Ohio River. From 1800 to 18 18 they 



1800-1900] FOREIGN IMMIGRATION 563 

flowed side by side there, but did not merge. To this day 
the line dividing the New England from the Virginia zone 
in these three states is plainly traceable through their 
south-central portions. In 1820 the streams met in Mis- 
souri, but the one from Virginia was the more powerful. 
Now, for the third time, the streams of migration met, but 
disappeared like some western rivers when they touch the 
prairie, reappearing not again till they burst forth in Cali- 
fornia. 

Here mining, not agriculture and the competitions of 
skilled labor, made new economic conditions. The state, 
unlike the thirty-two which preceded it, was composite. 
Its population was cosmopolitan, and in its composition a 
sign of the times. 

The great immigration from Europe into the United 
States now set in.* By i860 more than two and a half mil- 
lions of immigrants arrived, and for the first time the 
greater portion hastened on to the newer states. Had it 
been possible it might have gone to California, but the 
perilous overland route was an injunction on migration ; 
the route by the cape and isthmus was too expensive. 
Railroads made it possible for all to reach the heart of the 
country, and a road to the Pacific was now planned. 
Unable to cross the plains, the eager population resumed 
the old struggle along the frontier. Again the Indians 
were pushed back. Minnesota was admitted in 1858, and 
Oregon in the following year. The free states in the Mis- 
sissippi Valley now began competing for population. That 
of Minnesota Avas from the states immediately to the east, 
even to New York and New England. But Minnesota led 
the country in its proportion of foreign-born. Oregon was 
made up of a population that had come to the coast for 
gold, but had found commerce and farming more profitable. 
Many had come from Missouri and Kentucky. It was a 
southern state in the Northwest. Again population con- 
verged, and Kansas was the result. Its population was 
about equally divided between northerners and southerners 
till slavery agitation stimulated immigration to it from the 
free states. Its admission in 1861 was coincident with the 

* 1850. 



5^4 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1906 

outbreak of that mighty economic revolution which adjusted 
the industrial balance in the western world. 

For nearly forty years the inhabitants of the western 
counties of Virginia (in 1861-62 forty-eight in number) had 
been agitating organization as a state. Though of the old 
stock of Virginia, they were economically a different people. 
Their country sloped to the west; their commerce was not 
with the tide-water country. The exigencies of national 
preservation hastened the work of forty years to a conclu- 
sion, and West Virginia was admitted in 1863. Nevada, 
admitted in the following year, was also a political acci- 
dent ; created a state out of the Territory of Utah in order to 
strengthen nationality. Its population was chiefly an over- 
flow from California. It was the second composite com- 
monwealth in the Union. War did not interrupt the 
coming of aliens from i860 to 1870. Two millions and a 
half found homes here during these years, of whom the 
greater part settled in the Mississippi Valley, Nebraska, 
admitted in 1867, was settled from states to the east, but 
one-fourth of its people were foreign-born. By 1870 the 
states to the east had sent about eighty-two thousand native 
Americans to this new commonwealth alone. 

The movements of population after 1867 followed new 
as well as old lines. The abolition of slavery opened the 
South to immigration, and many northern men went there 
for permanent homes. This old part of the country was 
economically new, and deflected many immigrants from the 
Northwest. Another decade of Indian wars followed, dur- 
ing which the hostiles were gradually forced into smaller 
and more remote reservations, but the pressure of popula- 
tion, which means the clamor for cheap lands, stimulated 
an ever eager, ever increasing, and ever restless multitude, 
along the frontier and all along the eastward, to the arriving 
steamers crowded with immigrants, to demand that the 
reservations be opened to actual settlers. On the day that 
marked the centennial of American independence, Colorado, 
the third composite commonwealth, became the thirty- 
eighth state of the Union. One-fifth of its people were 
foreign-born. 

Thirteen years of Indian warfare then followed. The 



1800-1900] THE NEW NORTHWEST 565 

remnants of many tribes, and the fiercest of all, were now 
at bay. The war was relentless, and one practically of 
tribal extermination. During these years nearly eight mil- 
lions of immigrants arrived, and nearly half a million went 
directly into the Far West, tempted by cheap lands and 
the railroad facilities for reaching them. Into the region 
still under territorial organization came a constant stream 
of settlers from Ohio and states to the west and northwest 
of it. California and Oregon, Nevada and Utah now sent 
thousands into Washington, Idaho, and Montana. These 
were admitted in 1889; the Dakotas, also, after six efforts, 
were admitted in that year, and the President signed the 
act admitting them in such a manner that the two states 
became members of the Union at the same moment. Idaho 
and Wyoming were admitted in the following year, and 
Utah in 1896. The native population of all these new 
members fell slightly below a million, of which the greater 
portion came from the northern states. The Virginia influ- 
ence just fell short of this northwestern group. 

The constituents of the population of Dakota in 1880 
illustrated the sociological character of the two states into 
which it was divided, and also substantially the character 
of the remaining states in the group. Dakota had received 
52,700 persons from states north of Maryland and east of 
the territory, and from states south of Pennsylvania and 
east of the Mississippi, 2,200; from the region west of 
Dakota and north of Indian Territory, 1,100, and from 
the remainder of the United States, 2,000; 17,800 persons 
were natives of the territory. Of the natives of states and 
other territories, 71,596 were born in that part of the coun- 
try which may be called the New England-New York belt; 
and 1 1,786 were natives of the Virginia belt. The foreign 
population consisted of 51,795 persons, of whom all except 
600 came from parts of Europe north of the latitude of 
Venice. Montana and Washington contained similar con- 
stituent elements, except that there was a larger proportion 
of population from the south-central and southwestern 
states. Kentucky, the first new state, was admitted in 
1792; Utah, the last, one hundred and four years later. 
It was expected that before the century closed New Mexico, 



566 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1900 

and possibly Arizona, would be admitted. Both are essen- 
tially a Spanish remainder with reinforcements from the 
states. 

The struggle for cheap lands intensified rather than 
abated after the admission of the new northwestern states. 
The once vast Indian country had shrunk to a fraction of 
the Indian Territory. Oklahoma was the last piece of 
transfer of title, and the entering wedge that must ulti- 
mately split the Indian Territory into states. When these 
territories are admitted — or even before that time — the 
process of multiplication by division will begin. Scarcely 
a state in the Union is an economic unit. West Virginia 
suggests west Tennessee, west Montana, west Washington, 
west Wyoming; North Dakota suggests north California, 
north Idaho, north Minnesota, north Michigan, north Mis- 
souri, north Wisconsin, north Georgia. It was supposed 
more than half a century ago that long ere this Texas 
would be divided into at least five states. The principle 
which in the future will cause the subdivision of the states 
will not be, as it has been in the past, almost purely politi-. 
cal, but industrial and economic. All the old states are 
political units in theory, but most of them comprise an 
eastern, a central, and a western interest, as Massachusetts, 
New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee; or a northern and a 
southern, as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Minnesota, and California. 
Most of the states are too large for local government of the 
best kind. Peace and industry will gradually break up 
the present political units into economic units, with inter- 
ests administered on the principles of American govern- 
ment, but with a social eflficiency of which the tendency of 
American politics is the sign. 

Of the sixteen millions of foreigners who settled in the 
country during the century, about one-half were living at 
its close, and more than four-fifths of these resided in 
northern and northwestern states. Slavery deflected them 
from the southern states for seventy years, and racial 
prejudices continue to divert them, in large measure, from 
that portion of the country. The consequence has long 
been perceptible in the apportionment of congressional 



iSoo-igoo] EUROPE IN AMERICA 567 

representation among the northern states. Of this acces- 
sion from foreign lands, nearly five millions came from 
Germany and settled north of Mason and Dixon's line, 
from the Atlantic to central Dakota, and most densely in 
the states of the old Northwest and Minnesota. More 
than three millions were from Ireland, and they, too, set- 
tled within this northern area, but most densely in the 
older states and near the Atlantic seaboard. They com- 
prise a large proportion of our urban population. A million 
and a half came from England and Wales, and they are 
somewhat evenly distributed over the country. 

A million Norwegians and Swedes located in the north- 
ern belt, and chiefly in its northwestern portion, Wisconsin, 
Minnesota, and North Dakota, the climate of which is like 
that of their native land. An equal number of Italians, a 
contribution of the last twenty years of the nineteenth 
century, inhabit the cities and towns of the country, chiefly 
in the Atlantic basin, but they are found in increasing num- 
bers in southern New Jersey and central Illinois. A French 
migration of less than half a million has mingled with the 
urban population along the Atlantic. Slightly less numer- 
ous than the Italians were the Russians and Poles, who 
largely supplied labor for railroad operations and public 
works. On the Pacific slope three hundred thousand 
Chinese remained "an unabsorbed and unabsorbable ele- 
ment." The Swiss, Danes, and Netherlanders, about half 
a million in number, scattered over the country, and chiefly 
engaged in farming. The line that divides the native from 
the foreign portion of our population is the line that divides 
the area largely occupied by people of the African race 
from the remainder of the country. North of this are few 
negroes; south of it few immigrants. 

Great as was this foreign immigration, it fell far below 
the native migration in numbers, extent, and influence. 
Swarm after swarm left the old hives ; first leaving the thir- 
teen original states; later, the tier along their western 
border, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, 
and Louisiana; later, the tier to the west, Illinois, Indi- 
ana, Michigan, Missouri, Arkansas; later, these last states 
for the newer ones. These migrations occurred in the 



568 HUNDRED YEARS' MIGRATION [1800-1900 

order named, about fifteen years apart, and with each new 
swarm from a young state there came another from the 
old, so that our domestic migrations were contemporaneous 
and constant. 

Several dominant causes accelerated this migration ; 
cheap lands, equal rights and immunities as guaranteed 
under the national Constitution, and the facilities for trans- 
portation. The latter cause was combined with cheap 
lands, for the national government subsidized western rail- 
roads with a gift of public lands aggregating an imperial 
domain three times as great as the area of the original 
thirteen states as they are to-day. Hundreds of thousands 
went west by wagon, but millions went by rail. The old 
line of the Missouri Compromise divides the northern and 
southern streams of population westward. In the twenty- 
one states north of this line there resided at the close of 
the nineteenth century nearly eight hundred and twenty- 
five thousand natives of New York, and in New Mexico, 
Arizona, and Oklahoma, about five thousand more. Within 
this vast area resided less than half as many who were 
natives of Virginia, and few Virginians were found in 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wash- 
ington. Next in proportion of natives of other states 
within the New York area were those of Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Illinois, and New England, and within the Virginia 
area those of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, the Caro- 
linas, and Georgia. 

The hundred years* migration in America presents many 
unique features. Most impressive was the transformation 
of an almost unexplored continent into forty-five common- 
wealths within the short period of a hundred years. Inter- 
esting and suggestive as was this migration of men from all 
climes, it was less interesting and less suggestive than the 
migration of ideas recorded in the constitutions, the laws, 
and the social institutions of the country. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME 
1860-1900 

At the close of the nineteenth century the population of 
the United States numbers nearly seventy-five million 
(over twice that in i860), and the city population is now 
one-third of the whole. In i860, the cities contained only 
one-sixth of the population. In 1800, the area of the 
United States was 830,000 square miles; in 1900, it is 
3,602,390 square miles, exclusive of Hawaii, Porto Rico, 
and the Philippines, or nearly four and a half times greater. 
Since i860 twelve states have been admitted to the Union: 
Kansas, 1861 ; West Virginia, 1863; Nevada, 1864; Ne- 
braska, 1867; Colorado, 1876; North Dakota, South 
Dakota, Montana, Washington, 1889; Idaho, Wyoming, 
1890; Utah, 1896. 

The Union of forty-five states is now closely bound 
together by common sentiments, by common interests, by 
business relations, and by the mechanical conveniences of 
railroad and steamboat lines, the post-office, the telegraph, 
and the telephone. 

The part of our country first explored, settled, and 
organized under civil government by Europeans was natu- 
rally along the Atlantic coast. Its harbors and rivers gave 
an easy entrance to the ships in use by the settlers, which 
seldom drew over six feet of water. Thus it came about 
that our oldest towns, as in most countries, are near the 
sea. 

The region from the Atlantic coast to the crest of the 
Appalachian Mountains, long called the Atlantic plain, is 
narrowest in Maine and widest in Georgia. At the time of 
its first settlement it was an unbroken forest, chiefly of the 
many varieties of pine, oak, beech, and maple, and wild fruit- 
trees. The great number of its rivers flowing to the sea 

569 



570 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

made the entire region easy of settlement. The Indians 
were numerous and fierce, but they never succeeded in pre- 
venting the whites from taking possession of the land. 
The dense forests, the changeable climate, more severe 
than that of Europe, the want of many comforts, and above 
all, the small number of settlers, were far more serious 
obstacles to the occupation of the country than were the 
Indians. As late as the American Revolution, the settle- 
ments reached barely to the middle of the Atlantic plain. 
A line drawn from Moosehead Lake to the head-waters of 
the Tennessee would lie to the west and outside of the 
actually settled area of our country at the time when the 
Declaration of Independence was signed. America was 
nearly three centuries old before population passed over 
the Alleghany Mountains. By three centuries must be 
understood the time after the discovery by Columbus, as 
there is reason to believe that North America is older than 
any other continent. 

During the last two of these three centuries, the Atlan- 
tic slope was gradually settled along the sea by a people 
motly engaged in farming, fishing, ship-building, and com- 
merce. Transportation was mostly by water or wagon. 
The ancient forests were in the way, and they were burned. 
Untold millions of feet of valuable timber were thus de- 
stroyed. Yet in 1776 most of the primeval forest was 
yet standing. Could we have then looked down upon the 
Atlantic slope and viewed the country from some lofty 
height from Maine to Georgia, it would have seemed quite 
untouched by man, so small was the area under cultivation 
compared with the area in a state of nature. 

So vast was the country and so few its English settlers, 
King George III. attempted to secure peace between them 
and the Indians by establishing a boundary beyond which 
to the west the whites should not go. This was in 1763. 
Before a dozen years passed, however, bold hunters, like 
Boone, were venturing across the line into the valleys of 
the Cumberland, the Tennessee, the Kanawha, and the 
Ohio, all teeming with game, and they were the advance- 
guard of the millions of settlers soon to follow. After the 
Revolution, a vigorous migration westward started from 



1860-1900] EARLY OCCUPATION OF COUNTRY 571 

the thirteen states. Old and young set out from the Caro- 
linas and Virginia toward Tennessee and Kentucky. 
People from the middle and eastern states migrated to the 
Ohio country. This migration has never ceased; it has 
filled the Mississippi Valley, and has pushed on still farther 
westward until the whole land has been occupied. But 
the history of the Mississippi Valley has been quite differ- 
ent from that of the Atlantic plain. The dense forests 
retarded population in the plain, but no such obstacle 
existed in the greater part of the great valley. Western 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and the highlands 
of Kentucky and Tennessee, were covered with woods, but 
great portions of Ohio were an open country. The pine 
and the oak gave place to the chestnut and the beech. The 
soil was deeper and more fertile; was lighter and more 
easily tilled. The woods continued as far west as the 
Mississippi River, but when this was crossed, the emigrant 
entered upon the prairies, richly carpeted with grass and 
flowers, and almost treeless, except along the banks of 
streams where the Cottonwood flourished. 

But the forests began again in Missouri, and extended, 
deep, dark, and almost impenetrable, across Arkansas, 
Louisiana, and the eastern part of Texas. After 1820 
migration from the older states, which began in 1776, was 
reinforced by the influx of hundreds, and later of tens of 
thousands, of men and women from Europe. This foreign 
migration at last amounted to about a half a million souls 
a year, and for many years these settled in the Mississippi 
Valley. From 1607 to 1776-78 population had extended 
from the Atlantic seaboard westward to an average dis- 
tance of less than one hundred miles. In most striking 
contrast was the rapidity with which the Mississippi Valley 
was overrun and organized into states and territories. By 
1850 every inch of land belonging to the United States as 
a nation was thus under some kind of civil government. 
In 1850, settlers were coming into Kansas, attracted by the 
cheap, fertile, and accessible land. A farmer might have 
as many acres as he would promise to pay for. The rivers 
and creeks were the chief highways to market. But at 
this time railroads connected Chicago with Boston, and a 



572 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

line ran from Boston to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
and Charleston, and to a few smaller cities. There were 
no trunk lines at this time. Suddenly the discovery of 
gold in California turned the thoughts of men to the far 
Pacific coast. 

At this time the western edge of white settlements was 
along a line running irregularly through central Missouri, 
Iowa, and Wisconsin at the North, and through Arkansas 
and Louisiana at the South. Florida was almost a wilder- 
ness, and like Texas, was settled only at isolated points, 
chiefly near the sea. The discovery of gold hastened the 
settlement of the Pacific slope, which before was almost an 
unknown land. The first states settled in the Mississippi 
Valley were Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, chiefly 
between 1780 and 1803, at which latter date Ohio was 
admitted into the Union. Iowa was admitted in 1847, and 
Kansas was seeking admission ten years later. Thus it 
took about half a century for population to occupy the 
country from the crest of the Appalachians westward to 
Kansas. It had taken nearly four times as long for it to 
occupy the Atlantic plain. The attractions of the Pacific 
slope caused its occupation within a year and a half. Cali- 
fornia was admitted in 1850, with more than two hundred 
thousand people ; most of them had gone there within two 
years. Oregon, which was created a territory in 1848, 
became a state in 1859. Washington was made a territory 
in 1853. The news of the California gold mines spread 
over the world. Thousands of immigrants started for the 
coast from the older states overland, and thousands more, 
joining the vast cavalcade, started from Kansas and Ne- 
braska. These were made territories in 1854. At this 
time immigration to the Mississippi Valley was direct from 
Europe. Germans, Scandinavians, Englishmen, Canadi- 
ans, and Americans from the old states, settled in great 
communities in the northern part of the Mississippi Valley. 
Minnesota, created a territory in 1849, was admitted as a 
state five years later. Population was still passing west- 
ward when, in 1861, Congress organized the great Territory 
of Dakota, out of which two states were formed twenty- 
eight years later. Thus the region reaching from the 



1860-1900] BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI 573 

Mississippi Valley to the great divide of the Rocky Moun- 
tains was greatly affected by the discovery of gold. The 
condition of Europe also hastened its settlement. Its cheap, 
fertile, and abundant lands were the chief attractions. 
The acquisition of Texas, in 1845, completed our owner- 
ship of the Mississippi Valley, and it was quickly colonized 
by a vigorous migration from the southern states. 

Soon after the discovery of gold in the Sacramento 
valley, a like discovery was heralded from Nevada. Farm- 
ers and planters had migrated to Ohio and Kentucky 
from the East; miners and speculators poured into Nevada 
from East and West. It became a territory in 1861, and 
a state in 1864. New Mexico and Utah had been created 
territories in 1850. Other territories followed; Arizona 
and Idaho, in 1865; Montana, lying partly in the Pacific 
highland and partly in the Mississippi Valley, was made a 
territory in 1864. Colorado, also lying in both regions, 
was made a territory in 1861, but did not become a state 
till 1876. Wyoming, in the highlands, became a state in 
1890, after having been a territory twenty-two years. The 
precious metals were found in all these new regions, and 
hastened their settlement. But the towns were only min- 
ing camps. It thus took about fifty years for population 
to move from Pennsylvania to Colorado. The Pacific slope 
was occupied in about two years and the Pacific highlands 
in about twelve; although there were a few old settlements 
in this part of the country — the old Spanish towns, which 
dated from the sixteenth century. Of these Santa F6 was 
the oldest. During this long period of occupation from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, beginning in 1607 and extend- 
ing to 1850, the Indian tribes were exterminated, or forced 
back, westward, southward, northward, anywhere, into the 
Indian Territory, or into small reservations in other parts 
of the country. They had caused almost continuous wars, 
but they had never seriously impeded the progress of the 
white man across the continent. The great streams flowing 
into the Atlantic Ocean have long been the natural high- 
ways of the eastern part of our country. The lesser streams 
furnished motive-power till the steam-engine took the place 
of the water-wheel. This change has become almost com- 



574 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

pletc since i860. A glance at a map of New England dis- 
closes the reason for the early importance of manufactures 
in that region. Rivers and small streams are abundant 
there, and their swift waters, owing to the hilly country, 
give ample motive-power to mills and factories of all kinds. 
After 1830 the manufacturing interests of New England 
were strengthened by congressional legislation ; but there 
would never have existed this vast New England workshop 
if its people had not been accustomed from an early day to 
use the natural power at hand in the streams. Manufac- 
tures thus got an early footing, and they have increased 
and prospered there. As a consequence, innumerable 
towns sprang up along the New England streams, and with 
the growth of towns came city government, public libra- 
ries, fine public schools, colleges, churches, universities, 
newspapers, and a vast activity in book-making. The 
towns made good markets, and the farmers in adjoining dis- 
tricts prospered. 

The rivers of New England are not navigable for modern 
ships, Augusta and Hartford are at the head of naviga- 
tion on two principal rivers, and Calais on a third. As 
water-routes, therefore, the rivers of the region fell into 
disuse as the draft of ships increased. The perfection of 
railroads soon took business off the rivers, and after 1865 
many streams which thirty years earlier were alive with 
shipping, their banks resounding with the hum of ship- 
yards and wharves, practically became great sewers for 
the cities and towns along their banks, and are now quite 
without shipping. 

The rivers of the middle states have a briefer but a 
similar history. The Appalachian Mountains divide the 
states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland into two 
water-sheds: the eastern the Atlantic, the western the 
Mississippi and St. Lawrence. For many years the history 
of the Hudson Valley was the history of the State of New 
York. The Hudson is practically a long, narrow, but 
navigable bay, making Albany a seaport. Till 1825 this 
city stood at the head of navigation, but the completion of 
the Erie Canal made Chicago an Atlantic port, for it made 
a clear waterway through the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, 



1860-1900] PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COUNTRY 575 

and the Hudson to New York Bay. No work done by- 
man, on this continent, surpasses in importance and in its 
effect on our history the completion of the Erie Canal. 
It opened the markets of the world to the people dwelling 
in the northern half of the Mississippi Valley. The canals 
and the railroads parallel to it, constituting in general the 
Vanderbilt lines, carry a great portion of the freight and 
passengers moved along the east and west line in this coun- 
try. Excepting the Hoosic Mountains, the country from 
Boston to Colorado is quite level, making easy grades for 
railroads, and therefore making construction cheaper and 
allowing higher speed than on roads farther south. For 
nearly thirty years the Erie Canal was the chief commercial 
highway from the West to the East. The many ranges 
of the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania practically 
forbade a competing canal system, although the state 
attempted one in 1834. But it was abandoned by 1850. 
Thus the physical features of the country from Boston to 
the Far West largely explain why Ohio and all states west 
of it to the Rocky Mountains were settled in great measure 
from New England and the middle states, and why New 
York has become the commercial metropolis of the East, 
and Chicago of the interior of our country. 

The Delaware River has contributed to the prosperity 
of the states it divides, but the mountains of Pennsylvania 
have prevented any successful connection of its waters with 
those of the Ohio. The Susquehanna and all rivers farther 
south, including the Pearl, though affording local water- 
ways, never attained the importance of the Hudson. As 
long as slavery lasted, the South was agricultural, and 
its limitless water-power was scarcely used. In colonial 
times, its rivers and streams gave an entrance to the plan- 
tations. Cities and towns did not spring up as in New 
England. The population of the South was mostly rural. 
Charleston, with its fine harbor, afforded all the advantages 
of a port of entry. Had the southern people chosen to take 
up manufacturing when New England did, they would have 
been unable to use their rivers and streams to like extent, 
because their currents, though powerful, are more sluggish. 
Though much larger than those of the North, they are less 



576 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

adapted for use as a mechanical power. After the steam- 
engine displaced the water-wheel, manufactures centered in 
northern towns. A glance at a map of water-routes in our 
country at the present time will show that the number of 
navigable rivers at the South is much greater than at the 
North. As the South is now a great manufacturing region, 
and becoming greater every year, it is quite certain that 
its rivers will continue to be most important commercial 
highways. 

The wonderful occupation of the Mississippi Valley was 
largely due to its accessibility. From the north, the Ohio 
River was an easy highway, and the Cumberland, the Ten- 
nessee, and other streams, any one of which may be called 
a large river, gave easy entrance from the older states of 
the South. Once the emigrant got over the mountains, 
he could float to his destination.* In the settlement of 
the great valley, the Ohio has borne as great a part as the 
Hudson and the Erie Canal in the settlement of the old 
Northwest. All the states along the Ohio River received 
thousands of immigrants over its waters. The familiar 
story of Lincoln's early life shows how important was the 
river in the history of these states. f The populous and 
rich cities along its banks attest its commercial importance. 
In the history of our country, the Ohio has been the high- 
way of pioneers. Other great tributaries of the Mississippi 
have been important, but in less degree. The Missouri, 
stretched far away almost to the Pacific Ocean, gave easy 
access to the long unknown West. Lewis and Clark made 
their wonderful journey to the Oregon country in 1 802 over 
the Missouri. The importance of the Missouri is suggested 
by the existence of St. Louis, the metropolis of central 
America, and also by prosperous cities and towns at inter- 
vals northwestward to Fort Benton. Readers of Park- 
man's Oregon Trail need not be told how important was 
the Missouri during the days of the fur trade. It was not 
this trade, but the indomitable and innumerable immigrants 
who, venturing their all on the wheezing litte steamers that 

* See the author's Constitutional History of the American People, 
1776- 1850, Vol. I, Chapters V and VIII, "The First Migration West. 
I See Miss Tarbell's Life of Lincoln. 



1860-1900] THE ECONOMIC BONDS s11 

ascended the river, at last founded Kansas, Nebraska, and 
territories and states beyond. 

It is not too much to say that the Mississippi River 
made the American Union possible. It is equally true 
that the fate of the Union depends upon the free navigation 
of the river. So long as it runs, as President Lincoln said, 
"unvexed to the sea," a common highway for the country, 
the world will know that we are a united people. In the 
seventeenth century, the river and its tributaries admitted 
the bold French explorers into the interior of the conti- 
nent, and for a time it seemed that the great valley was to 
be New France forever. Hundreds of French names sur- 
vive in the names of towns and streams, and will always 
remind the world of the wonderful courage and devotion 
of the French pioneers. As the years have passed, the 
importance of the Mississippi as an artery of commerce has 
increased. In 1850, the lines of trade in our country were 
from Boston, New York, and Albany westward to Chicago ; 
from Baltimore and Philadelphia westward to St. Louis. 
Now the commercial lines are also southward from Chicago 
and St. Louis. Railroad construction on what are known 
as the Gulf lines — that is, north and south in the Mississippi 
Valley — is comparatively cheap. There are no costly grades 
to overcome. Since 1870 railroad extension has been 
mostly within these lines. The large towns in Texas, at 
the Gulf, have become ports of deposit for the vast produc- 
tions of the Mississippi Valley. Connecting lines of steam- 
ers bear these products northward and to Europe. 

The large and somewhat sluggish rivers of Louisiana 
and Texas have as yet borne no very important part in our 
history. They are waterways for the lumber cut along 
their banks. Their future is promising, however, for they 
are navigable for long distances. They must ultimately 
make Texas one of the most easily accessible states in the 
Union. Our country is wonderfully easy of access from 
the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains by great water- 
ways. The Great Lakes, comprising with their connections 
the St. Lawrence system, are our inland seas, and so exten- 
sive are the mining and lumber interests of the region they 
drain, the tonnage of freight yearly over them is almost as 



578 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

great as the entire tonnage of the rennaining waterways of 
the country. The ores mined about Lake Superior are 
carried to the cities along the south shore of the lakes, and 
there furnish employment to thousands. The cheapness 
of these ores has located the great iron and steel plants of 
the country at Cleveland and other cities. Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois are manufacturing states to-day; when they 
were settled, they were agricultural states, and the existence 
of the Superior ores was quite unknown. These vast depos- 
its affect the daily lives of people all the way from the 
mines to the South and the East, for they supply a large 
part of the freight on the great trunk lines of the country. 
No extensive waterways exist west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, excepting Puget Sound and the Columbia River. 
There are lesser streams in California and Oregon. The 
Pacific slope and the Pacific highlands, forming nearly one- 
third of our country, are not accessible by water. The 
discovery of gold was the prime cause leading to the con- 
struction of railroads across the continent. Congress 

o 

granted enormous land areas to aid the construction. The 
companies depended on the sale of these lands, which soon 
went into the market as population moved westward. 
Nature prepared the way for the roads by forming the great 
passes through the Rockies and the Cascades; otherwise 
the task of construction would have been long delayed. 
Through these passes the railroads could enter the new re- 
gion, traverse it, and connect the East and the West. The 
Colorado River lies mostly at the bottom of a deep canon ; 
the San Joaquin and the Sacramento are navigable for a 
distance. Thus transportation throughout this portion of 
our country could not be by water. In consequence, popu- 
lation is there distributed less evenly than in the Atlantic 
plain and is found chiefly in towns. As the whole region 
abounds in valuable minerals and metals, its customs, laws, 
and business methods have developed somewhat differently 
from those of the East. California mining laws have been 
re-enacted in substance in the other states and territories 
of the region. On the other hand, New York laws have 
been re-enacted in the states directly west of New York as 
far as Montana. The laws of Iowa and Wisconsin resemble 



1860-1900] AMERICAN LAWS 579 

those of New York, because these states were largely set- 
tled by New York people. The Pacific railroads were built 
just ahead of the settlers, so that they were encouraged to 
take up land and develop the country. The Southern 
Pacific affected the settlement of the Southwest. The 
laws there resemble those of Virginia and Georgia and Mis- 
souri. The laws of Missouri, on the other hand, resemble 
those of Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Although 
all parts of our country are now connected by railroads, it 
does not follow that the same laws prevail, or the same 
customs or business methods, although our national bank- 
ing system tends to give uniformity to business. Our 
country is now so large, its productions and interests so 
varied, its physical features so distinctive, it is impossible 
for our people to be exactly alike. The people of the 
states within a region which nature has made so different 
from another region, as for instance the people of the east- 
ern and manufacturing states, of the mining states, and of 
the agricultural states in the Mississippi Valley, have each 
their principal interests, which largely determine the char- 
acter of their laws and their local institutions. 

Perhaps the effect most easily detected is industrial. 
It is clear that a man's occupation largely depends upon 
his place of residence. Communities, in this respect, are 
like individuals. New England is a manufacturing center 
and its people demand markets for their goods, cheap 
transportation, improved machinery, and above all, laws 
which they think Congress should pass for the protection 
of their interests. The southern states, so long exclusively 
agricultural, and largely so to-day, demand a market and 
transportation and protection, but not always by such laws 
as are asked by the New England people. The mining 
states about the Great Lakes and on the Pacific coast have 
yet other interests, and ask for laws of a still different char- 
acter. So long as slavery lasted, it was practically impos- 
sible for Congress to satisfy North and South. The abolition 
of slavery put an end to the principal cause of disturbance 
in our industrial affairs as a nation. 

The practical effect of the various physical features of 
our country is difficult to trace in detail, though quite clear 



580 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

in a general way. Slavery long caused political differences 
between the manufacturing and the agricultural sections of 
the country, and was a principal cause of the Civil War. 
The climate of the South made slavery possible and to some 
extent profitable. Thus the institution was in part sus- 
tained by natural surroundings, as the climate at the North 
was too cold to permit it. Otherwise, it doubtless would 
have been upheld there. Climate, therefore, had much to 
do with the abolition of slavery and the political conse- 
quences it has entailed. 

As a rule, the mining states of the Pacific region had 
favored "free silver," the manufacturing states of the center 
and the East favored gold ; the agricultural states of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley inclined to free silver. It has been said that 
were the people of the gold states to exchange homes with 
those of the silver states, gold men would become silver 
men and silver men gold men. Whether or not this is 
true, it illustrates a great principle that the opinions of men 
are largely molded by the physical features, the produc- 
tions, and the interests of the region in which they live. 

Although Alaska has been part of our country since 
1868, it has not until recently attracted great attention. 
The thousands who have gone to it for gold have had no 
intention of making it their permanent homes. It does 
not, therefore, rank with the great regions of which we 
have spoken. Hawaii and Porto Rico are habitable. The 
Philippines, too, are in a region where a white man may 
live, at least for a time. The Spanish-American War has 
brought us new territory which as yet has little history 
that can be called American. They must remain under 
military rule for a time and gradually assume their place as 
American possessions. Hawaii has nothing peculiar in its 
physical features except its position as a military possession 
and an Ame-rican stronghold on the highway to Asia. The 
laws which Congress may extend over these islands must 
be adapted to people of a tropical clime. Laws suitable 
to the inhabitants of Massachusetts, Louisiana, or Cali- 
fornia may not be adapted to the natives of these new 
possessions. 

In reading this history of our country, as we follow its 



1860-1900] RANK OF THE STATES 581 

wonderful growth, events come thick and fast, and one 
quite forgets our mountains and our rivers, our mines and 
the soil and climate, which after all are of immediate inter- 
est to each one of us. But if we stop a moment to think, 
we will discover that the course of American history fol- 
lows the lines here suggested. Our people have migrated 
and made homes in strict obedience to the laws of physical 
geography. This may seem a strange statement, but it is 
true. The physical features of the country proved helps 
or hindrances in the early years of exploration and coloni- 
zation. At the present time they affect the settlement of 
the country, but in a less marked degree than formerly. 
Our wars have followed the lay of the land. Had the Civil 
War been fought in Kansas and Nebraska instead of amidst 
the natural fortifications of the border states, the end would 
have come sooner. Certainly our isolated position as a 
nation has been of great advantage to us. Now that we 
are isolated no longer, we enter upon a new chapter of our 
history. At the present time, when population is getting 
dense and all the competitions of life sharper, it is quite 
clear that if our country is to remain united forever, as we 
all desire, the glorious result will be maintained only by a 
common and intelligent knowledge of the wants of all sec- 
tions of the country. There is no North, no South, no 
East, no West, isolated and hostile. Ours is a united 
country, at peace with itself and with the whole world, its 
people living under laws which seek to protect life, liberty, 
and property. 

Migration, immigration, and the development of min- 
ing, agriculture, and manufactures changed the rank of 
the states during these forty years: 

Rank in i860. Rank in 1900: 

New York, New York, 

Pennyslvania, Pennsylvania, 

Ohio, • Illinois, 

Illinois, Ohio, 

Virginia, Missouri, 

Indiana, Massachusetts, 

Massachusetts, Texas, 

Missouri, Indiana, 

Kentucky, Michigan, 

Tennessee. Iowa. 



5S2 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

From i860 to 1900 nearly fifteen million immigrants 
came to this country from the Old World. Pauper immi- 
grants and the Chinese are excluded. The greater number 
of these immigrants have settled as follows: 

The Germans, north of 36° 30', and chiefly from Penn- 
sylvania to Colorado. 

The Irish, north of 36° 30', chiefly along the coast and 
in the cities and towns as far west as the Dakotas. 

The Scandinavians, north of 41°, and chiefly between 
Lake Michigan and Montana. 

The Canadians, north of 41°, from the Atlantic to the 
Dakotas. 

The Chinese, chiefly on the Pacific coast. 

The English and Scotch, quite uniformly over our coun- 
try. 

The Italians, largely in the South and in the seaport 
towns, also in New Jersey and Illinois. 

The Polanders, in the mining regions, Pennsylvania, 
West Virginia, Ohio, and temporarily wherever railroads 
were building. 

There had been a continuous migration to the West 
from the older states, and as a rule the course was directly 
westward from older states. The migration from New 
England, though relatively small, is suggested by the names 
of two cities, Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon. 

The great migrations were directly west and mostly 
north of the former slave-holding states, from New York, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; directly west and 
mostly south of 36° 30', from Virginia, the Carolinas, 
Georiga, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Missis- 
sippi. 

The Pacific states were populated from states north and 
south of 36° 30'. From California and Oregon many have 
gone into Nevada, New Mexico, Washington, Colorado, 
Wyoming, and Montana; that is, into the mining states. 

States west of Illinois have laws like those of New York, 
Ohio, and Illinois, rather than like those of Virginia, Ken- 
tucky, and states south of them. 

States west and southwest of Tennessee and Mississippi 
have laws resembling those of Virginia, the Carolinas, and 



i86o-i90o] CITIES 583 

Kentucky. The two sections of the country have laws of 
the New York type and of the Virginia type. 

But the mining states from the Missouri to the Pacific 
have laws modeled largely after those of California. 

The growth of American cities during the last forty 
years of the century was typified in Chicago. In i860 it 
had a population of one hundred and ten thousand, in 
1900 it was nearly seventeen times as great. Our country 
in 1900 had five hundred cities, each having a population 
of not less than eight thousand. In Washington's time 
there were only six such cities. 

The reason for this astonishing growth of cities is the 
same as it was half a century ago. Most of our factories 
are in cities, and these give employment. Many of the 
principal schools are there. Cities offer many opportunities 
for making a living. Hospitals, theaters, charitable organi- 
zations, are maintained there. Cities are great railroad 
centers. But our city population is over-crowded and 
thousands suffer there who would get along comfortably in 
the country. The chief causes of the growth of cities are 
the centralization and concentration of capital and labor in 
them. 

Fuel and raw material are cheaply transported; markets 
are reached over railroads that center in the great towns. 

During the last thirty years of the century, Belgian 
blocks or asphaltum largely took the place of cobblestones 
for street-paving. After 1880, electric light largely dis- 
placed gas light. Nearly all our cities extended and beauti- 
fied their parks. Public health compelled this. Surface 
drainage almost entirely disappeared. Nearly every city now 
has a department of public health. Our cities are cleaner 
than they were thirty years ago. Most noticeable is the 
improvement in "rapid transit." Since 1890 horse-cars 
have quite disappeared and given place to electric or cable 
cars. 

City architecture underwent a revolution after 1870 by 
the use of iron in buildings. Buildings fourteen stories high 
are no longer uncommon. 

Electric lighting made possible great improvements in 
the health, the safety, and the business of cities. 



584 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

After i860 petroleum came into use. The art of refin- 
ing it so as to make it non-explosive was perfected by 1876. 

At first the refineries made no use of the waste, but this 
was soon found to be highly valuable. About sixty useful 
products are now manufactured from the oil. 

In April, 1877, the telephone was first used for business 
purposes. After ten years' experimentation, Alexander 
Graham Bell perfected an instrument. It connected Boston 
and Somerville. Thomas A. Edison and Elisha Gray 
invented instruments, also, in 1877-1880. Since 1884 
telephones have come into common use. 

About the same time Charles G. Brush, of Cleveland, 
Ohio, Moses G. Farmer, of Newport, Rhode Island, William 
E. Sawyer, of New York City, Albon Man, of Brooklyn, 
and Edison, of Menlo Park, New York, were working in 
independent lines on the problem of electric lighting. In 
1878 the incandescent light was put on the market. Since 
that time electric lighting has become one of the great 
enterprises of this country and of the civilized world. 

The electric dynamo revolutionized transportation and 
manufacturing. In 1876, at the Industrial Exhibition at 
Philadelphia, the "Centennial" electric lights and motors 
were displayed as scientific toys. At the Columbian Fair, 
Chicago, in 1893, a building covering nine and three-tenths 
acres was wholly devoted to electricity. The use of elec- 
tricity has only began. 

Yet one must not conclude that invention and discovery 
have been chiefly in electricity since the days of Lincoln. 
Equal progress was made in every branch of manufacture. 
To-day there is scarcely a machine of any kind to be found 
of the pattern of i860. Railroad locomotives, cars, and 
steamboats to-day are not of the pattern of i860; farming 
tools, mechanics' tools, stationary engines are of a new 
type. Machinery is finer, lighter, and stronger than it used 
to be. Perhaps a type of the change is the steam-shovel. 
This was quite unknown in i860. To-day steam-shovels 
are made weighing two hundred thousand pounds, and lift 
ten tons without effort at one time. The wonderful prog- 
ress in applied electricity has been paralleled in other 
directions. This was evident from a glance at the various 



1860-1900] BOOKS AND AUTHORS 585 

buildings at the Columbian Fair devoted to mining, to 
transportation, to manufactures, and to machinery. 

The newspaper as we know it began during the Civil 
War. People demanded the latest news. The papers that 
could best supply it prospered; the rest perished. The 
system of correspondence, distribution, and illustration, and 
of quick, cheap issues then began. 

The reporter came into being, and his race for news has 
gone on over the world. "Interviewing" was unknown 
till war time. 

A multitude of newspapers, magazines, and journals are 
now published in the interest of special occupations, indus- 
tries, and pursuits. These, with few exceptions, began 
publication after i860. 

The Century Magazine, founded in 1870 as Scribner s 
Monthly, took its present name in 1881. The Forum was 
started in 1886, The Popular Science Monthly in 1872. 
Within recent years there have been established several 
illustrated magazines, such as McClure' s, Munsey s, and The 
CJiautauqiian, and quasi-magazines like TJie Woman s Home 
Journal, which reach millions of readers. 

The great dailies often contained as much reading mat- 
ter as a magazine, and many of them became penny papers. 
Nearly thirteen thousand American periodicals were read 
by the American people. 

The great writers who began to publish their works 
between 1830 and i860, with few exceptions, continued 
writing for many years. Bryant died in 1878, Longfellow 
and Emerson in 1882, Lowell in 1891, Whittier in 1892, 
and Holmes in 1895. All these may be said to have done 
their best work after i860. Motley died in 1877, ^^id Ban- 
croft, Parkman, and Parton in 1891. Of the historians 
who distinctively belong to a later period are John Fiske, 
born 1842; John Bach McMaster, 1852; Henry C. Lea, 
1825; Moses Coit Tyler, 1835, and James F. Rhodes, 1848. 

The forty years after i860 marked an era in literature 
the world over. In America three writers were conspicu- 
ous, William Dean Howells, Francis Bret Harte, and Samuel 
W. Clemens, the latter better known as "Mark Twain." 
These were conspicuous because they were wonderfully 



5S6 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

productive through all these years. Howells and Harte 
published their first books in i860: Howells, a thin volume 
of poems and a campaign life of Abraham Lincoln; Harte, 
a little book of short stories; and each averaged a book 
a year during the next forty years. Clemens, beginning 
five years later, was equally prolific. The period may 
be called the age of the American novel, with Howells as 
the central figure. Our literature was enriched by many 
other writers, most of whom were living at the close of the 
century.* Among famed books of the period must be 
included General Grant's Memoirs, written in 1885 on his 
death-bed. He wrote with the classic simplicity of Plutarch. 

The books which distinguish the period were not in 
literature, but in science; books on politics, social economy, 
and applied science in its various and multitudinous 
forms. The list was enlarged by current publications on 
the same subjects. For the first time since the invention 
of printing, newspapers, magazines, and books devoted 
to social economy, engineering, education, religion, gov- 
ernment, and innumerable reforms were published at a 
profit. It may be called the age of the magazine, literary 
and scientific. One need only to turn to an old file of 
magazines, published before i860, and one of the best may 
be named, Harper s, and contrast them with the magazine 
of to-day, in typography, illustration, and contents, to 
appreciate the significance of the description of the period 
since i860 as the age of the American magazine. 

Of the great personages who move across the historical 
stage during the last forty years of the century, one fills 
the perspective and seems to project himself into all time — 
Abraham Lincoln. Though in the eye of the world for 

* There is room here to mention only a few: George William Curtis 
(1824-1892); Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836); Richard Henry Stoddard 
(1825); William W.Story; J. G. Holland (1819-1892); Louise M. Alcott 
11832-1888); John W. Draper (1811-1882); T. W. Parsons (1819-1892); 
Klizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844); U. S. Grant (1822-1885); S. W. 
Clemens, "Mark Twain" (1835); Lew Wallace (1827); Charles Dudley 
Warner (1 829- 1900); Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833); Mary N. Murfree, 
James L. Allen, George W. Cable (1844); Emma Lazarus (1849-1887); 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892); Rrander Matthews (1852); Francis Marion 
Crawford (1854); John Burroughs (1837); Henry tames (1843); Edwin P. 
Whipple (1819-1886), and Charles Eliot Norton '(1827). 



1860^1900] ABRAHAM LINCOLN 587 

barely four years of ofificial life, he seems to have implanted 
himself so firmly amidst the elements of life, there is no 
room for others. He was struck down at the close of a 
terrible national tragedy, his death a climax in a drama of 
extraordinary parts and persons. 

No name in the long catalogue of our public men can 
be put beside his own; he was unique; he forbids compari- 
sons. Not that he was merely greater or less than the rest ; 
he was different. He seemed to vanish into the shadows 
from which he came. Even when we know, as we now do 
know, that his election to the presidency was the logic of 
the situation, we seem none the wiser, for it is the situation 
which puzzles us. 

Men love to attach mystery and marvel to such as Lin- 
coln, and to build traditions upon their names. Not until 
thirty years after Lincoln's death were his letters, speeches, 
and state papers collected and published, but they added 
nothing material to his fame. That was already secure. 
The work with which he was identified was done, and the 
nation of which he was for half a century a private citizen 
and for four years President had entered upon a new age ; 
or, as he expressed it, "a new birth of freedom." This 
it was which places him with the Fathers of the republic as 
a founder and creator, and not merely as an administrator. 

The American people long ago ceased comparing him 
to any of his contemporaries. His Homeric qualities bear 
back to a classic age when the foundations of the republic 
were laid. Thus we hear his name coupled with Washing- 
ton's, and not as one of the same rank, as an equal, but as 
possessed of an individuality, an integrity of virtues analo- 
gous in kind, even if not of the same kind. 

Men of these kinds penetrate later time by their virtues, 
and by embodying many excellencies rarely combined in one 
person possess themselves of the age through fame. Even 
the ancient world produced but two such characters, Alex- 
ander and Caesar, and these were of so different a type from 
that of Washington or Lincoln as to preclude comparisons. 

The fame of Lincoln is the dome of the republic indi- 
vidualized. Every nation has its Lincoln, as the Swiss 
have Tell, whether hero or myth; the English, Alfred the 



58S AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

Great ; the Russians, Peter, and the oriental peoples, their 
founders of religions. 

The great political act of Lincoln's time, the abolition 
of slavery and the bestowal of the elective franchise upon 
the former slave and his descendants, renewed the long 
practice of the republic and pointed to the destined custom 
of the whole world. Its consequences are with us to-day, 
and seem almost as difificult to manage as the original ques- 
tion of slavery. The ideal was followed in this great 
political act, and with the ideal Lincoln's name is forever 
associated. Cost what it might for coming generations, 
he and his advisers and the larger part of the nation believed 
that it was the right thing to do. Distinctively the act 
was Lincoln's act; the ideal his ideal. And it was encom- 
passed with "charity to all; with malice toward none." 

The centuries rarely produce such a situation and such 
a man as came to the front in America from i860 to 1865. 
It is because Lincoln represented the spirit of American 
institutions that he is enshrined in the hearts of his coun- 
trymen.* 

The eminent men who served with him and after him 
exemplified the same spirit. Grant had it in full, and dis- 
played it at a crucial moment, at Appomattox, when his 
great military opponent. General Lee, was a prisoner in his 
hands. His words, "Let us have peace," which run along 
the facade of his mausoleum on the Hudson, re-echo Lin- 
coln's, uttered in his first inaugural, "We are not enemies, 
but friends." 

Here were two men of a kind, and posterity has recog- 
nized the likeness by associating their names together in 
tender and affectionate remembrance. -We are too near 
our later statesmen and public characters to be able to por- 
tray them, much less to place them in permanent perspec- 
tive. Their names come to the lips. Only yesterday they 
were shouted amidst the ringing campaign, or heralded 
through the press because of some brilliant word or deed. 
Our own times are crowded with names of active, clear- 
sighted, patriotic men who move in a large way among us 

* For an account of Lincoln's part in the extension of the suffrage, see 
my Constitutional History of the United States, 1765-1895, Vol. Ill, Book V. 



i86o iQoo] RAILROADS 589 

and seem to be bidding a fair price for fame. Great as 
their opportunities may be, these will rarely be so great 
as those which come to our older statesmen. What new 
opportunities our now widely extended republic may offer 
her sons, none can foretell ; but the history of great men is 
the history of growing empires, and the book of opportu- 
nities is not yet closed. 

Looking backward, we all see plainly that America has 
offered two unique opportunities for action and service : one, 
the Revolution, which produced George Washington ; the 
other, the Civil War, which called forth Abraham Lincoln. 

During the years i860- 1900 the postal service was greatly 
improved, hi November, 1864, the money-order system 
went into operation. The first postal-car service began in 
the preceding August, on the Iowa division of the Chicago 
and North-Western railroad. Postal-cards were first used 
in this country in 1873. Li 1883 the rates on letter post- 
age were reduced from three cents to two and the present 
classification of mail matter adopted. In later years the 
delivery system was much extended. 

There remains now no West like the wilderness signified 
by that word half a century ago. The West began to 
vanish when the railroad reached the prairies, in i860. For 
nine years more, the "overland route" w^as traversed by 
stage and pony express. All political parties in i860 
favored a Pacific railroad, built partly with government aid, 
and in 1862 the work began. Congress chartered two 
companies, the Union and the Central Pacific. The first 
built from Omaha to the coast, the second from the coast 
(Sacramento) toward the East till the roads met. On the 
loth of May, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, the engi- 
neers of the two sections clasped hands, a spike of silver 
and gold was driven, and the work was done. These two 
roads received from the government nearly $62,000,000 in 
money, and every odd-numbered section of land in a strip 
equivalent to one twenty miles wide and nearly two thou- 
sand miles long. Before the century closed, there were in 
operation over one hundred and seventy-two thousand 
miles of railroad in this country, and six vast trunk-line 
systems united the East and the West. 



590 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1600 

Beginning in 1857, gold and silver in paying quantities 
was discovered in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, 
Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and Alaska. The development 
of the mines was a principal cause of the rapid increase of 
population into the western part of the country, and in 
thirty years transformed most of it into states. 

In 1870, the construction of the Northern Pacific rail- 
road began. It was built in advance of population, and 
laid out towns which were soon prosperous communities. 
Dakota was organized as a territory in 1861, Idaho and 
Washington in 1863, Montana in 1864, Wyoming in 1868. 
When the Northern Pacific was begun these territories had 
a population of 82,848; in 1880 it was 202,851; in 1890 
it had reached to 1,238,166. Of this population in 1890, 
five-sixths of those native-born were from states north of 
36° 30', and of the foreign-born, eighty-four out of eighty- 
five were from countries north of Italy. 

The new Northwest contains the great cattle ranches 
and wheat farms, and furnishes most of the beef, mutton, 
flour, and meal marketed in the United States. Chicago 
is the center of the grain and beef business. From. Minne- 
sota to the Rocky Mountains and from the Canadian border 
to Indian Territory once roamed countless herds of buffa- 
los. Since 1870 this animal has become almost extinct, 
and is preserved in zoological gardens as a curiosity. 

After 1870, several fierce outbreaks of the Indians re- 
sulted in their destruction, the forfeiture of their lands, 
and a "rush" for them as soon as declared by the President 
to be open to settlers. In 1876, General Custer and his 
troops were destroyed, on the Little Big Horn River, Mon- 
tana, by an overwhelming force of Indians. For several 
years the Modocs in Oregon had been on the war-path. 
All the tribes since 1876 have been confined to their reser- 
vations. After each Indian war, new lands have been 
opened to settlers, so that little now remains except the 
lands of the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. 
These lands will probably soon be taken from the Indians. 

As early as 1865 demands were made that Indian Terri- 
tory be opened to white settlers. In 1866, Congress bought 
a large part of the territory, but on condition that only 



1860-1900] OKLAHOMA 591 

civilized Indians and freedmen should be permitted to 
occupy it. The restriction was in vain. Bands of ranch- 
men, immigrants, and many who wished to obtain new and 
large areas for pasturage, constantly invaded the region. 
The pressure on Congress became so great that finally it 
authorized President Harrison to name a day when settlers 
might cross the line and stake out their claims. The 22d 
of April, 1889, was named. As the day approached, 
thousands of people gathered along the line ready to rush 
in when at the hour of noon the bugle should sound. The 
official notes were scarcely afloat on the air before fifty 
thousand people were in a wild rush for claims. When 
night fell, Oklahoma had cities of ten thousand, where at 
sunrise the grass had never before been trodden by the feet 
of white men. Before the year closed, the new territory 
had over sixty thousand population. 

In the general prosperity that has blessed our country, 
the South has shared. It has held several industrial expo- 
sitions illustrative of its wealth and resources; at Atlanta 
in 188 1, at New Orleans in 1884, and the Tennessee Cen- 
tennial at Nashville in 1896. 

During the last forty years of the century terrible fires, 
floods, tornadoes, and other accidents at times afflicted 
portions of the country. In every instance the country 
responded to the cry for help to a degree never before 
witnessed among men. The spirit of peace and good will 
thus displayed may be said to permeate our laws and our 
institutions. The harsh and cruel laws of less than a cen- 
tury ago are no longer in force. Public institutions for the 
help and care of the criminal and unfortunate classes are 
constantly increasing. Individuals, cities, commonwealths, 
the nation itself, establish and maintain these beneficent 
institutions. 

Chicago had been settled sixty years, when it was 
chosen as the site of the exposition to celebrate the four 
hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. The 
exposition was unparalleled in the world's history. On the 
peristyle were several inscriptions worthy to be remem- 
bered by every American, because they express the prin- 
ciples that underlie our institutions: 



592 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

"Civil liberty, the means of building up personal and 
national character." 

"Toleration in religion the best fruit of the last four 
centuries." 

"A few dared, failed, and suffered; myriads enjoy the 
fruits." 

"To the brave settlers who leveled forests, cleared 
fields, made paths by land and water, and planted com- 
monwealths." 

"To the brave women who, in solitude, amid strange 
dangers and heavy toil, reared families and made homes." 

"We here highly resolve that government of the people, 
by the people, for the people shall not perish from the 
earth." * 

More than four centuries have passed since Columbus 
made his wonderful voyage in search of India. For a long 
time it seemed as if Spain was to possess the new-found 
continent. England, however, claimed North America as 
the fruit of Cabot's voyage, but France claimed a portion 
of it as the discovery of Cartier. In 1763, France gave up 
the contest for North America. In 1776, the United 
States became independent. Spain then extended from 
the Mississippi to the Pacific. But Spain conveyed Louisi- 
ana to Napoleon, and from him it was bought by the United 
States in 1803. This extended our domain to the Rocky 
Mountains. Spain lost Mexico in 1820, Texas in 1836, 
and California in 1848. Oregon was ours by discovery, 
occupation, and treaty. In 1829 we acquired Florida, in 
1853 the Mesilla Valley, in 1867 Alaska, and in 1898 
Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. 

Perhaps the most significant evidence of the place held 
by the United States among the nations of the world was 
the commercial ascendency of our country in the closing 
years of the century. All through our national history the 
record of progress has comprised new chapters telling of 
mechanical inventions, useful discoveries in the arts, im- 
proved processes of manufacture and appliances without 
number, all tending to cheapen the cost of production, to 
extend the market, and in nearly all instances to improve 

* Nos. I, 2, 3, 4, 5, were from President Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard. 



1860-1900] OUR PLACE IN COMMERCE 593 

the article. American manufactures began about the time 
of the second war with England, 1812, and had to compete 
with the skilled labor and experience of older nations, of 
which the chief was the United Kingdom. In 1900 the 
production of manufactured goods in the United States 
reached the enormous value of $12,500,000,000, while that 
of Germany and the United Kingdom fell $450,000,000 
below this. In other words, our country, at the close of 
the nineteenth century, became the leading manufacturing 
nation of the world. This mighty result was not an acci- 
dent, or due to the decay of labor in other lands. It was 
the inevitable consequence of American inventive skill, of 
American improved methods, and American energy. In 
the history of the world no parallel can be found to the 
phenomenal growth of our country in manufactures. One 
item is a sign of the times: Great Britain, which for cen- 
turies has led in the iron trade, in 1899 produced 8,631, 151 
gross tons of iron, but the United States, nearly 12,000,000 
long tons, and the iron trade is an accurate index of the 
industrial condition of a country. 

No less significant is the comparative agricultural con- 
dition of our country. Austria has a larger population 
engaged in agriculture than the United States; Germany 
comes next to us; then France. But the true index is 
production, not the mere number of farmers. "An ordi- 
nary farm-hand in the United States raises as much grain 
as three in England, four in France, five in Germany, or 
six in Austria, which shows what an enormous waste of 
labor occurs in Europe, largely because the farmers are not 
possessed of the mechanical appliances used in the United 
States. This is seen when we examine the production of 
grain per capita of the persons employed. In the United 
States it is 350 bushels, in the United Kingdom 119, in 
France 98, in Germany 75, in Austria 64, and in Italy 39."* 

Ours is a country abounding in machinery of all kinds, 
and little is done by hand labor that can be done by 
machinery. American supremacy in this respect is signi- 
fied by the fact that the use of machinery in the United 

* Hon, Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, in 
the Century Magazine, July, igoo. 



594 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

States IS 1,940 foot-tons for each inhabitant; in Great 
Britain it is 1,470, in Germany 902, in France 910, in 
Austria 560. and in Italy 380. This capacity of the 
American people to labor explains their commercial ascend- 
ency and lies back of that industrial conquest of the mark- 
ets of the world which marked the closing years of the 
century. 

But commerce varies in volume from year to year. It 
is made up of exports and imports. The three commercial 
nations are the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. 
"At the present time [1900], the exports of the United 
States exceed those of any other country in the world." * 
From 1848 to 1900 the record shows that down to 1876 the 
value of exports exceeded that of imports during only three 
years, 1858, 1862, and 1874. Since 1875 the value of 
imports has exceeded that of exports during only four 
years, 1875, 1888, 1889, and 1893. Our exports constantly 
increase; our imports decrease. No other country is in 
like condition. Our exports constantly find new markets, 
and we increase our exports to the old ones. "In 1870 we 
sent to the United Kingdom $243,316,828 worth of goods, 
and during 1899 we sent $505,668,925 worth, while for 
the same years we took from the United Kingdom $152,- 
066,269 and $118,472,048 worth of goods; that is, while 
more than doubling our exports to the United Kingdom, 
we greatly reduced our imports. The difference in the 
figures for Germany is still more marked, although the 
amounts are not so large. We raised our exports for 
the period named from over $41,000,000 to over $153,- 
000,000, but in imports we increased from over $27,000,- 
000 to $84,242,795." t 

Turning to new markets, their acquisition by Americans 
was even more striking. To Japan our exports increased 
from $3,000,000 in 1893 to $26,000,000 in 1900, and dur- 
ing the same time they increased from $3,900,000 to 
$15,000,000 to China; $4,000,000 to $8,000,000 to Hong- 
Kong; $145,000 to $2,000,000 to Asiatic Russia; $7,800,- 
000 to $24,000,000 to British Australasia; $2,700,000 to 

* Ibid. 

flbid. 



1860-1900] AMERICAN EXPORTS 595 

$12,000,000 to Hawaii; $154,000 to $2,000,000 to the 
Philippines, and to all Asia and Oceanica, $27,000,000 to 
$104,000,000.* This signifies the American conquest of the 
Orient, not by soldiers, but by skilled labor, improved pro- 
cesses in manufactures, and a peaceful policy. 

This mass of American exports becomes more interest- 
ing when broken up into its constituent parts. In 1870, the 
value of the bread-stuffs exported was $72,250,000; in 
1899 it had increased to $274,000,000. Of meat and dairy 
products we sent away to the value of $29,000,000 in 1870; 
in 1899, to the value of $175,500,000. American machin- 
ery was sold abroad in 1870 to the value of only $2,350,- 
000 ; in 1899 it was $44,285,000. Similar was the increase 
in our exportation of boots and shoes ;f drugs, dyes, and 
chemicals; ;}: nails and spikes; || pipes and fittings; § locks, 
hinges, and other builders' hardware.^ 

Of other exports, two vast groups may be said to have 
come into being during the last thirty years: steel rails and 
coal. Down to 1870 the United States imported great 
quantities of iron and steel, and especially of steel rails. 
This importation has almost ceased, and American rails are 
being laid on the important roads in foreign countries. In 
1870, we exported $65,081 worth of steel rails; in 1899, 
$5,298,125 worth. 

Our exportation of coal, which in 1870 was worth 
$1,306,358, twice as much in 1880, and five times as much 
in 1890, was over ten times as great in 1899. All this 
points to rather an alarming condition of the coal supply of 
Europe. The Old World is threatened with a coal famine, 
which means disaster to many millions of people. "Every- 
thing must suffer, manufactures, shipping, transportation 
of all kinds, and especially the naval armament. The 
United States," continues Mr. Wright, "according to 
careful estimates, possesses at least fifty per cent of the 

* Ibid. 

11870, $419,612; 1899, $2,711,385. 

X 1870, $2,360,461 ; 1899, $10,995,289. 

II 1870, $265,951; 1899, $1,864,596. 

§ 1870 (not reported); 1899, $5,874,228. 

]f 1870 (not reported); 1899, $4,858,752. 



596 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

coal area of the whole world. The production of coal in 
this country at the present time [1900], is something 
like thirty per cent of the total production of the world. 
The question may well be asked, Is the time coming when 
this country will furnish not only the food for the support 
of armies, both industrial and military, of some of our 
greatest competitors, but also the fuel food by which armies, 
navies, industries, and transportation are supported? Some 
years ago it was calculated by skillful engineers that the 
coal-fields of the Appalachian range contained forty times 
as much coal as was contained in Engknd before a pick 
was ever struck into it. These considerations must con- 
vince the American public that this country is in no danger 
of either a food or a fuel famine, for our supply of fuel is 
estimated to be equal to the demand for at least one thou- 
sand years." * 

In addition to our domination of the food market of the 
world, and we are the chief purveyor of its breadstuffs and 
meat; and in addition to our prospective domination of 
the world's fuel market, and our large handling of the 
world's supply of illuminating oil, we have made rapid 
strides toward gaining control of the world's tool market. 
"American tools and machinery," says Mr. Wright, "are 
gradually finding their way over the world. More than a 
generation ago (i. e., circa i860) agricultural implements 
of American make began to displace English tools. This 
was especially true of shovels and spades manufactured in 
Massachusetts of iron imported from Sweden and England. 
They were made light, strong, and durable, and displaced 
very rapidly English-made tools in the British colonies. 
Carpenters' tools and all the lighter tools of production 
have long been popular abroad ; in fact, an ordinary tool 
taken out of the stock in trade of a hardware dealer would 
take the prize in a foreign exposition in competition with 
foreign-made goods especially made for exhibition. The 
skill with which the American tools are made, their strength 
and lightness in comparison with foreign-made goods, con- 
stitute their attraction; but now [1900] machinery of com- 
plicated structure — locomotives and various other things — 

* Ibid. 



1860-1900] AMERICAN DOMINATION OF TRADE 597 

is being exported to different foreign countries. Egypt is 
trying our locomotives; they are sent to South America; 
even Germany and Russia order them. The best testi- 
mony in regard to the excellence of our locomotives, and 
which indicates that in the future we may look for a still 
larger use of them abroad, comes from Lord Cromer, the 
British minister plenipotentiary in Egypt. 'Their choice,' 
he says, 'is simply due to the fact that American firms 
almost invariably offer engines built on standard designs of 
their own at lower prices and in less time, while the Eng- 
lish and other European makers, content themselves with 
their old designs, not being, as a rule, in the habit of manu- 
facturing to standard designs of their own. We prefer,' 
he says, 'to adhere to our standards, but in cases where 
time and cost are of great importance, offers from America 
cannot be passed by.' "* 

What is here said of American locomotives is true also 
of American stationary engines and bridges. They are 
finding their way over the world, and notably in Egypt, 
Russia, and South America. It begins to look as if we 
were to provide the rest of the world with food, fuel, rails, 
bridges, and rolling-stock. 

And what of the man who does the work in America? 
What of his wages, his clothes, his home, his opportunities, 
and the condition and prospects of his children? Here, 
too, America leads the world. The workingman in the 
United States, whatever his employment, wears better 
clothes, eats better food, receives higher wages, has better 
opportunities in life, and can do more for the welfare of 
his children than the workingman in any other country. 
"America," said Emerson, many years ago, "is another 
word for opportunity." 

Our country extends to-day over more than three million 
six hundred thousand square miles, and has a population 
of nearly seventy-live millions. It growth has been unpar- 
alleled in human history. What has America done for 
civilization? It has done five great things: 

It has contributed to establish the precedent for settling 
all disputes by arbitration instead of by war, 

*Ibid. 



59S AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

It has established religious toleration. 

It has extended the right to vote so that it is practically 
based on manhood suffrage and is universal. 

It has proved to the world that people of different 
nationalities can live together in peace and fit themselves 
to enjoy political freedom. 

It has proved that all people may enjoy a high degree 
of material well-being. 

A new experience befell the American people soon 
after the Civil War, the frequent outbreak of conflicts 
between employers and employees, familiarly called 
"strikes." They came hard after the initial contest 
between labor and capital, inaugurated about 1850, as the 
war of the people upon trusts and monopolies. This war 
dates from the old struggle in the forties to regulate bank- 
ing corporations. The laws on the subject in all the states, 
which soon filled statute-books, were a somewhat unex- 
pected fruit from the tree of natural rights. 

A hundred and twenty years ago the doctrine of natural 
rights was set forth in classic form by the American Con- 
gress. No dictum is more familiar to Americans, none so 
popular. As a political doctrine it has the authority, many 
believe, of a twelfth commandment. Nor has it escaped 
the various interpretations which different generations 
impose upon a revelation. Since that July day when Con- 
gress appHed it to the political conditions of 1776, and gave 
reasons for the application — "out of a decent respect for 
the opinions of mankind" — each generation of Americans 
has applied it to the political issues of its day. Orr the 
strength of the equal rights of man, every political reform 
in this country has been pressed forward. The doctrine is 
native to America in the form in which Jefferson clothed 
it, though the equivalent is found in Grotius and in Aris- 
totle. The Americans were the first nation to make the 
doctrine their fundamental article of political faith, ex- 
pressed in classic form in the Virginia resolutions and. in 
the Declaration of Independence. But neither George 
Mason, the author of the one, nor Thomas Jefferson, the 
author of the other, nor any of their associates or contem- 
poraries, understood the doctrine as it is understood to-day. 



1860-1900] INDIVIDUALISM 599 

To them it was the fundamental doctrine of individualism — 
the dominant idea of the Revolution of 1776. To-day it 
is interpreted as the fundamental doctrine of socialism — 
the dominant idea of the revolution upon which the people 
of the United States have just entered. It is now quite 
forgotten that the political characteristic of America in the 
eighteenth century was individualism ; it is obvious that 
the characteristic at the close of the nineteenth is socialism. 
To Jefferson and his contemporaries the Declaration con- 
veyed the idea of the enfranchised individual. No other 
was understood. Nor was the idea formulated only in a 
general way in a state paper. It was applied and defined 
elaborately in the twenty-three constitutions which the 
American commonwealths adopted in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, and was worked out in their legislation and civil 
administration. In none of these constitutions and laws is 
there a hint of the state, or the nation, as these terms are 
now understood. Mason's sixteen resolutions are the 
classic constitutional, as Jefferson's Declaration is the classic 
political statement of the doctrine, and with slight addi- 
tions, Mason's thought is set forth in commonwealth con- 
stitutions, nearly a hundred in number, adopted in this 
century, and also in the first ten amendments to the Consti- 
tution of the United States. 

The contest between Great Britain and the colonies was 
a 'contest between feudalism on the one hand and indi- 
viduals claiming their natural rights on the other; or, in 
general form, a contest between monarchy and democracy.* 
From the nature of the contest, communal or social senti- 
ment among the colonists was weak — indeed, almost lacking. 
The war was not begun "in order to form a more perfect 
union." For a dozen years the spirit of individualism was 
strong enough to prevent union, and for more than seventy 
years was strong enough to impair the more perfect union 
of 1789. This individualism of democracy in America in 
the eighteenth century seems ancient history in these days, 
although this antiquity is only thirty years old. The 
thought of Jefferson has been changed, but his words are 

*See "The Form of Democracy in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. 
I, Chapter II, of my Constitutional History of the American People. 



6oo AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

still quoted to interpret popular rights, or, more correctly 
speakin<^, the claims of agitators, of reformers, of political 
sects, and political parties. They are words of discon- 
tent — of discontent that runs with democracy. They hint 
at ideals just beyond. No political dictum is more potent 
in promises, and none has survived a greater body of prom- 
ises realized. 

No sooner was independence won than the doctrine of 
natural rights, and equality was given a new meaning — a 
meaning given it by the discontented, a meaning which 
began the movement in this country for universal suffrage. 
When Washington was chosen President by the electoral 
college, not one of its members was elected by popular 
vote. As doubtless originally intended, the presidential 
electors were appointed by the state legislatures. Had the 
college been chosen as it is to-day, by popular vote, and 
had every man voted who was qualified, not more than one 
hundred and fifty thousand ballots would have been cast in 
a population of three and a third millions, of whom nearly 
half a million were slaves. In an equal population to-day 
the vote would be six times as great. In other words, 
restore the election laws of 1789 and more than half the 
voters would be disfranchised. Then those only could vote 
who possessed a prescribed amount of land or income, who 
accepted a prescribed religious creed, and who were native- 
born w^hites. These restrictions applied to-day would cut 
off fully seven millions of voters. The discontent of the 
disfranchised was soon expressed. "A man should vote 
because he is a man" was the familiar cry; and the abo- 
lition of these suffrage qualifications was the first adminis- 
trative change demanded by the disciples of the doctrine 
of 1776. 

The struggle continued sixty years before manhood 
suffrage was finally won for the white race. It was a strug- 
gle which closed with unexpected victories. A race by 
law and common opinion considered the inferior was in 
slavery. A few of this race were free. Those in slave- 
holding states were an anomaly and a menace; in free 
states they were outcasts. In both the law gave them 
civil rights, but grudgingly. For forty-five years after 



1860-1900] WOMAN SUFFRAGE 601 

Jefferson's declaration of the doctrine of natural rights free 
persons of color were even without a country. Then New 
York, led by Rufus King and Chancellor Kent, made an 
epoch-making precedent — the constitution of 1821, which 
admitted free negro men to vote under the qualifications 
prescribed for whites, with an additional and discriminating 
property qualification. This was the beginning of that 
mighty movement culminating fifty years later in the 
enfranchisement of the African race in this country. The 
constitution of 182 i was so administered, however, that as 
late as 1846, close to the time of the disappearance of prop- 
erty qualifications for white voters, only about one thou- 
sand of the forty thousand negroes in New York voted, 
although fully one-third were qualified under the consti- 
tution. The reform had begun, though at this time and 
for nearly twenty years to come the negro slave was not 
legally a man. 

Meanwhile, another movement for extension of the suf- 
frage had begun, and those behind it rested their cause on 
their interpetation of the doctrine of 1776. A demand for 
the extension of the suffrage to women was made to the 
New York constitutional convention of 1846; another, to 
the Ohio convention of 1850; a third, to the Massachusetts 
convention of 1853. Each rejected it on the ground of 
expediency. But the movement was not stopped. From 
that time to the present the agitation for woman suffrage 
has continued, and the agitation has always rested on the 
doctrine of 1776. The agitation may be said to culminate 
in the admission of Wyoming, in 1890, with a constitution 
establishing universal suffrage — the first political fulfillment 
of the promise made a hundred and twenty years ago. It 
would not be expected that the constitution of the new 
state would be silent on so important a change. In its 
declaration of rights it recites the doctrine of 1776, adding 
that the right to vote and to hold office shall not be denied 
on account of race, color, sex, or previous condition of 
servitude. 

While the doctrine was being thus applied, the extension 
of the suffrage, in the course of a hundred and fourteen 
years, increased the number of voters from one in twenty 



6o2 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

in the population to one in four, by first enfranchising the 
white man, then the black man, and last, in fifteen com- 
monwealths, enfranchising women — in various degree, from 
the right to hold a school office, as in Pennsylvania, to the 
right to vote and to hold any office in Wyoming. The 
doctrine itself was in a state of evolution, and was gradu- 
ally applied to men industrially, as it had hitherto been 
applied to them politically. "Men by nature," so ran the 
new version, "have an industrial life; all are entitled to 
equal industrial rights." The transition to the new inter- 
pretation was an easy one, and the conclusion obvious. 
"The state must rescue and gurarantee this equality." 
Thus the doctrine of 1776 was made a highway from indi- 
vidualism to socialism. To-day millions in America believe 
that a foot-path runs from the highway to every man's 
door. 

Yet scarcely a hint of this transition is to be found in 
our constitutions and laws until the nineteenth century was 
half gone. The hint, and probably the first, was made in 
New York, in 1846. The new constitution of that year 
defined a corporation, and with slight changes, the defi- 
nition found its way into the new constitutions of Iowa, 
Illinois, and Michigan before the decade closed. There 
was a reason for this apparently sudden definition and limi- 
tation of the powers of a corporation and of the powers of 
the legislature to create corporations.* The reason had 
been developing in the public mind for twenty years — the 
twenty years of bank agitation. In corporations — chiefly 
those engaged in banking — individualism had met a power- 
ful and dangerous antagonist, "without a soul," which 
had sprung into the field full-armed and protected by the 
powers of the state. Individualism was outflanked by a 
legal fiction; it had but one recourse: the state must be so 
reorganized that corporations should be limited in their 
franchises, and thus be able to do as little harm as possible 
to individuals. The struggle begun more than half a cen- 
tury ago has continued to this present, with increasing 

* For an account of the growth of public distrust of corporations, see 
my Constitutional History of the American People, Vol. II, Chapters 
XIV. XV. 



1860-1900] THE NATION APPEALED TO 603 

intensity. It was at first proposed in several states to for- 
bid the legislature to create corporations, but this general 
attack was abandoned. 

How, it was asked, could railroads and canals be built 
if the constitution forbade the legislature to erect corpo- 
rations? The limitation might extend to banks, but would 
it not exclude capital from the state? Would not immi- 
gration pass by such a commonwealth and prefer one with 
a more generous policy? Might it not be well to permit 
banking, but under such limitations as to make frauds on 
the public and losses to the individual impossible? This 
was a common sentiment throughout the North and West, 
and was the beginning of the "industrial war" in America. 
For twenty years it was a war between the borrower, the 
individual, and the lender — the state banks. By i860 the 
struggle had grown so serious that state banks were to many 
a synonym for dishonesty and fraud. The panic of 1857 
intensified the struggle; by the opening of the Civil War 
it was suddenly transferred to new ground. Up to this 
time the chief forum of bank discussion had been the state 
legislatures and constitutional conventions. The issues of 
war suddenly transformed state questions into national. 
The contest between individuals and the banks was taken 
up by Congress, and the national banking act of 1863 was 
the result. A principal issue in state politics was thus 
transformed into an issue between national parties. This 
change made a new date in the history of the doctrine of 
1776. The individual, instead of relying on the common- 
wealth to protect his natural rights, now relied on the United 
States. In the national issue thus made the Democratic 
party claimed to stand for the individual; the Republican 
party, for the individual and the national banks also. 

The two parties stood on common ground, however, in 
that each sought to utilize the national government to pro- 
tect the rights of individuals, thus abandoning the original 
ground taken by Jefferson. The contest, however, was 
not settled. Rather, like an insurrection, it broke out in 
unexpected quarters. Nationality for five years was on the 
defensive, and again there was presented the spectacle of 
the concentration of powers in a government at a time 



6o4 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

when its life hung in the balance. Much of the legislation 
of these crucial years, both state and national, was paternal. 
Under highly favorable legislation, of which a great part 
was national, manufactures were stimulated beyond prece- 
dent, and many new ones were begun. On every hand 
corporations multiplied, and many of these owed their 
existence to acts of Congress. A protective policy kept 
many of these corporations and factories in existence, 
when, had that policy been modified or abandoned, they 
would have wound up their affairs. At this time the 
United States passed from a nation of farmers to a nation 
of factories, and for the first time began to compete in mar- 
kets which hitherto older countries had considered exclu- 
sively their own. 

Manufactures thus encouraged, trade and commerce 
extended, and all depending on Congress for life, the 
industries of the American people at once became the 
shuttlecock of political parties. There could be but one 
result: an increased dependence of those industries upon 
the national government. Individualism, as understood 
in 1776, was given a staggering blow. The revision of the 
doctrine of 1776, concurrent with these events, indicated 
that social changes of the deepest significance were going 
on. The whole character of the American people was 
changing. Nor were they changing in opinions or in their 
concept of the state only. They were making a portentous 
geographical change. The population was moving from 
country to town.* 

On the day when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of 
Independence, not three persons in a hundred of our popu- 
lation dwelt in the city; to-day, thirty-three of every hun- 
dred dwell there. This swift increase of urban population 
in progress was only one of a vast group of critical changes 
contributing to a common result. The concentration of 
population in cities — chiefly the result of the sudden stimu- 
lus of manufactures, because it was dependent upon them 
for a livelihood — revolutionized transportation, business 

*See Vol. I of my Constitutional History of the American People. 
Chapter V, "The Constitutional Elements"; Chapter VI, "The First 
Struggle for Sovereignty"; Chapter VIII, "The First Migration West." 



1860-1900] PROSPERITY OF THE FARMER 605 

methods, and standards of living. In i860, more than one- 
half of the land in the United States capable of producing 
a crop was yet in a state of natue. The stimulus to manu- 
factures created a home market, and this market, itself of 
extraordinary proportions, was now for the first time sup- 
plemented by an equally extraordinary foreign market. In 
Europe, in Asia, in Africa, no man could say, "The em- 
pire is peace." Military operations on a Napoleonic scale 
were there in active progress. Standing armies abroad and 
a temporary army of nearly two millions at home robbed 
the fields of labor, and made a market for farm products 
such as America had never known. Indeed, such a market 
the world had never seen. No army was ever so well 
clothed, so well fed, so well armed as the federal soldiers. 
Nor were these alone in their excellence. The betterment 
was general. Never before had the American farmer 
received so much for his crops nor the wage-earner so 
much for his labor. The dress of the people was wholly 
changed, both in quality and quantity. Home improve- 
ments hitherto only dreamed of were made on every hand. 
The architecture in city, town, and country changed. The 
old farm-house was enlarged or torn down for a better one. 
Village houses were improved. Churches and town-halls, 
business blocks and depots, sprang up as by magic. The 
interiors of private houses were beautified. Schools and 
schoolhouses multiplied, and the sudden increase in the 
number of college students and in the number and equip- 
ment of colleges indicated the pulse of general prosperity. 
No class prospered more than the farmers. Land rose 
in value, and land sales exceeded in five years the number 
made in the preceding fifty. Never had farming paid so 
well. The cereal zone, hitherto limited to Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, was rapidly extending west- 
ward and northwestward. Railroads led the way. In the 
small villages of Ireland, of England, of Germany, and of 
Scandinavia, American transportation companies sold tick- 
ets that would bring the immigrant over an uninterrupted 
journey of more than four thousand miles, and deposit him 
on a quarter-section on a line of railroad in the new West, 
where land of inexhaustible fertility could be had almost 



6o6 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1S60-1900 

for the asking. State vied with state in competing foi 
immigrants, and a foreigner might vote in the new com- 
monwealth if he but declared his intention to become an 
American citizen. 

Amidst these evidences of prosperity petroleum was 
discovered in limitless quantities, and the problem of cheap 
illumination was solved. Coal for the first time became a 
cheaper fuel than wood. Pictures and musical instruments, 
hitherto rare in American homes, became more and more 
common. The East was smoking with factories; the West 
was glowing with golden grain. The nation was prosperous. 

To this stupendous prosperity the national government 
was a chief contributor. The homestead act of 1862 had 
written at least one line in a folk-song: 

"Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm." 

He gave freely of his lands, and in less than thirty years 
he had parted with the best. Within the period of a 
single generation thirteen new states were admitted into 
the Union. Population, hitherto westward and south- 
westward, toward the close of this period turned its foot- 
steps from the Pacific eastward for the first time. The 
great West, which less than half a century ago was as wild 
as the Oregon trail, felt the national stimulus. Nor was 
extension of the farm area the only phenomenon beyond 
the Mississippi. Agricultural methods were there revolu- 
tionized by improvements in farm implements. Cunning 
machines in use there represented a greater number ol 
laborers than the entire population beyond the great river. 
In the older states farming was intensified rather than ex- 
tended. For the first time in these states land was said to 
be scarce. 

The home and foreign markets became a collateral 
security for heavy loans wherewith to purchase more land. 
Eastern capital for the first time was invested in vast 
amount in the West; the investment was freely made, and 
for a time safely and profitably for both borrower and 
lender. The West was mortgaged to the East. So gigan- 
tic became the proportions of tliis new business, and indeed 
so profitable, mortgage and trust companies sprang up, and 



1860-1900] INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS 607 

in a few years contributed largely to modify the business 
methods of the country. Water-power gave place to steam- 
power, new rewards stimulated invention, and there pre- 
vailed a conservation of industrial energy such as the world 
had never seen. The "good times" were not wholly 
limited to the United States. England participated in 
them, though in far less degree. Germany and France felt 
them too. As yet neither Europe nor America was forced 
to compete with Asiatic labor. The West was still a new 
world, quite unexploited. 

But in the progress of these changes the individual 
gradually fell in importance. Iron and steel, machinery, 
corporations, trust companies, and industrial combinations 
were crowding him to the wall. He saw his danger, but 
he began to realize his weakness. There remained for him 
only two ways of escape: join the combination or become 
a tenant to a new, an industrial, lord of the fee. To strug- 
gle single-handed was only to be pushed nearer the wall. 
But was not the national government, a powerful protector, 
within reach? Had it not emerged from the fiercest strug- 
gle in history triumphant, and in possession of vast powers, 
such as the highest Federalist of the olden time had never 
dreamed of? The states, it was clear, no longer held first 
place. In our political system they henceforth should be 
only satellites. State politics had fallen from their old 
place of first importance. No man, after 1865, would 
resign the office of chief justice of the United States to 
become governor of a commonwealth, even were it the great 
Empire State. No man was likely again, in ordinary con- 
ditions of life, to refuse a seat in the Senate of the United 
States or in the President's Cabinet. Hitherto there had 
been thirty-two capitals of the country; thenceforth there 
could be but one. Hitherto the states had taken the initia- 
tive in legislation ; henceforth Congress should take it, and 
address its laws more closely to individuals 

The doctrine of 1776 must be again revised, and the 
individual must seek the protection of his natural rights — 
now political and industrial — in the national government. 
This government was now visible all over the land. Post- 
offices of costly architecture sprang up in almost every 



6o8 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

congressional district. Custom-houses were multiplied, 
rivers and harbors were dredged, a revenue marine was set 
afloat, stately and powerful warships were built, each cost- 
ing more than the revenue of the government during its 
earlier years. A vast pension fund was annually distrib- 
uted, and thus, in one way or another, through internal 
improvements, through more than a quarter of a million of 
federal pensioners and of^cials, the money of the national 
government was daily sifted among the people. All pros- 
pered, corporations, combinations, and individuals, and the 
average wealth of the people surpassed that which former 
ages had known. Business enterprises widened and multi- 
plied on a scale beyond precedent. A national debt of 
nearly a hundred dollars for every person in the country 
was in process of rapid extinguishment. The President in 
an annual message proclaimed the time when it would dis- 
aappear — the fourth year of the twentieth century. For- 
eign capital sought investment in America. The golden 
egg had at last been laid. 

But constant stimulus produces some ill effects. Indus- 
try, like vaulting ambition, may o'erleap itself and fall on 
the other side. 

By the national bank act, the government became a 
partner in a colossal banking business, and the country was 
served for the first time with a currency in most respects 
practically perfect. Hostility to this currency never reached 
the hostility displayed toward the bills of credit of "corpo- 
rations," so sedulously and commonly attacked in 1846. 
The prosperity of the country raised it to a pinnacle of 
financial honor never before attained by any nation : the 
honor of actually paying its debts. This payment and all 
that it implied was a crowning glory for America; but 
crowning glories usually cost dear. American self-confi- 
dence, never slight, became a form of national security — 
and security, all men sooner or later know, is "mortal's 
chiefest enemy." As the doubters of our national power 
gradually disappeared, the belief began to prevail that ours 
is the strongest government on earth. Faith in a govern- 
ment is the soul of patriotism, but delusion and fanaticism 
may be mistaken for faith. 



1860-1900] USE AND ABUSE OF CREDIT 609 

To the era of unparalleled prosperity, during which the 
doctrine of 1776 had been revised, there followed inevitably 
an era of depression. Save in a few localities, the world 
was at peace. American inventive genius had contributed 
to the prosperity of other nations. It will never be known 
to what extent American inventions have contributed 
directly to the production of the whole world. In less 
than half a century the markets of the world have witnessed 
a gradual increase in the supply of all commodities, and the 
consumption has not kept pace with the supply. Much of 
this enormous industrial activity, both in the United States, 
in South America, and in Europe, was carried on by means 
of credit. The use of credit was a chief factor in founding 
western states, in extending agriculture, in building towns, 
and in county improvements. In the older states, credit 
was also used to a greater extent than before in establishing 
factories, and in franchises granted by cities, counties, and 
states. The use of credit in railroad construction, better- 
ment, and administration was unparalleled. This vast use 
of credit was in nearly every instance by corporations. 
Their operations surpassed even the financial transactions 
of the national government. The tax on the industries 
represented by these operations swelled state and federal 
revenues. "The government," men began to believe, "is 
able to raise any amount of money, because it is 'a govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people.' 
Its wealth is their wealth. What possible chance of loss 
when the promise of the government is secured by the 
aggregate property of the richest people in the world." 
The nation had made the people rich. Is not the nation 
the government, and can it not make everybody rich if it 
chooses? Does not every man have a natural right to 
riches, and is not government for the purpose of realizing 
the right? Surely the government keeps millions of intrin- 
sically worthless paper in circulation, and by its stamp 
maintains it all at the value of gold. Why should there 
be any limit on the issue, other than the limit of the 
people's aggregate wealth? 

The idea was not new. It was familiar to the people 
when Jefferson penned the Declaration. But at that time 



6io AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

the individualism of American democracy did not look to 
Congress as the fit author of such an issue. The thirteen 
states were then considered the proper source. When, 
twelve years later, the adoption of the national Constitu- 
tion was the issue, all who opposed adoption were identi- 
fied locally with the party favoring an unlimited state issue 
of paper currency. Seventeen votes could have rejected 
the Constitution in the conventions called to ratify it and 
thrown the country into political chaos. The framers of 
the Constitution knew the state of the country when they 
inserted the clause forbidding the states to issue bills of 
credit or coin money, or "make anything but gold and 
silver coin a tender in payment of debts." But the critical 
struggle which resulted, happily, in the formation of the 
more perfect union was long ago; it is now quite forgot- 
ten, and its issues, even when made known, only slightly 
affect the conduct of the living. 

Soon after the close of the Civil War the vast wealth of 
the country began to fall into the hands of a few. Some 
by accident, but a greater number by skill, increased their 
fortunes far beyond any precedent which this country had 
afforded. A few of these men of vast wealth were farmers ; 
most of them were manufacturers or the owners of exclu- 
sive franchises. History now repeated itself. The cry in 
1846 had been, "Down with corporations"; now the cry 
was, "Down with monopolies." Nor was the cry a sudden 
one. The murmurs of discontent had been swelling for 
twenty years. Individualism took new alarm, and through 
a powerful political party sought to utilize the national 
government in self-defense. 

Public sentiment throughout the West was sterner than 
in the East. When the people of the Dakotas and Mon- 
tana and Idaho and Wyoming and Washington and Utah 
sought admission into the Union, they had already defined 
in their state constitutions the monopolies with which they 
were contending, and they attempted to defend the indi- 
vidual in the exercise of his industrial rights. They went 
further in their effort to diminish the power of monopolies 
than New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Michi- 
gan had gone in tlioir rfforts lo diminish the power of 



1860-1900] THE RIGHT TO LABOR 611 

corporations half a century before. This struggle between 
individualism and monopoly was not a sudden quarrel. 
When a written constitution formulates such a struggle, it 
is evidence that the struggle has long been going on. Pri- 
vate thought has become public sentiment; agitation has 
become the statute, and the statute has been embodied in 
the constitution. These anti-monopoly clauses in the later 
state constitutions are evidence that the doctrine of 1776 
has been given a new interpretation. Another step has 
been taken from individualism to socialism. In 1776 it 
was the state which had few rights that the individual felt 
bound to respect; in our day, individuals complain that 
they have few rights which corporations and monopolies 
respect. Therefore the individual appeals to the govern- 
ment for protection. He seeks to organize a government 
in which some corporations and all monopolies shall be 
unconstitutional. This essentially is socialism. These 
anti-monopoly constitutions, and the legislation resting 
upon them, are little state arks of safety leading the way 
for the national fleet of the future. 

In the fundamental laws of the commonwealths admitted 
since 1876, the industrial interpretation of the doctrine of 
the Declaration is unmistakable. Thus North Dakota in 
its bill of rights defines the natural rights of man to be 
industrial as well as political. His is "the right to labor," 
and it is the function of the state to secure him both occu- 
pation and the fruits of his labor. Between him and mo- 
nopolies the state shall be a barrier. The state is viewed 
to-day in an entirely different light from that of a century 
ago. The individualism of 1776 complained of too much 
government; to-day it complains of too little. Then the 
state was not conceived as an organism functioned to pro- 
mote the general welfare; now the state is conceived as the 
source and fountain of justice, protection, and authority. 
No one in Jefferson's time conceived of the state as the 
true and exclusive owner of rights and privileges in our day 
exercised by common carriers, such as railroad, steamship, 
telegraph, and traction companies. State ownership, 
county ownership, city ownership, of such properties is no 
longer an unfamiliar thought. The later constitutions are 



6i2 AMERICA IN OUR OWN TIME [1860-1900 

full of a latent socialism of which those of the eighteenth 
century contain no hint. Nor are these later instruments 
unsupported. A various and voluminous body of legis- 
lation embodies an approving public opinion. 

There is evidence here of a discontent which turns with 
confidence to government as the common protector and to 
the national government as supreme. The confidence bred 
by prosperity is strengthened by the hope bred amidst 
adversity. The socialization of government has begun. 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, 3S8-404. 

Acadia, iii. 

Adams, Alvon, 432. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 386, 457, 475. 

Adams, John, 154, 155, 163, 166, 167, 208, 
220, 251 ; Vice-President, 28g, 295 ; Presi- 
dent, 302-310; his books, 316. 

Adams, John Quincy, 320, 343; President, 
350-352, 361, -?66. 

Adams, John Quincy (2d), 476, 477. 

Adams, Samuel, 129, 159. 

Agriculture, Colonial, 146, 147 (1776-1800), 
311, 312, 31S (1900), 593, 605, bob. 

Aguinaldo, 523. 

Alabama, admitted, 348, 495. 

Alabama claims, 475. 

Alabama, the, 457. 

Alaska, 347, 470, 504, 580. 

Albany, 356. 

Alcott, Louisa M., 436. 

Aldrich, T. B., 435. 

Alexander VI., Pope, 16. 

Algonquin race, the, 3. 

Alien act, 306-308. 

Allen, Ethan, 6g, 162. 

Allen, Horatio, 362. 

Alliance, Farmers' party (1890), 510, 511. 

Allison, W. B., 498. 

Almanac, Colonial, the, 15s, 156 (1776-1800), 
314- 

Amendments to Constitution, the first 
Ten, 294; the Eleventh, 307, 413; the 
Twelfth, 332; proposed Thirteenth of 
1861, 441 ; the Thirteenth, 469 ; the Four- 
teenth, 469; the Fifteenth, 473. 

" American's Messenger," 153. 

American Prohibitionist party (1884), 502. 

American Revolution, outbreak, 159-167; 
the contestants, 203-206; military events, 
(1776), 206, 207 (1777), 208-211 (1778-79), 
212-217 (1780-81), 218-220 (17S1-S3), 220, 
221 ; character of, 222-234. 

'■ American System," the, 357 (see tariff). 

Ames, Fisher, 295, 301. 

Amherst, Jeffrey, General, 122. 

Amusements (1776-1800), 325,326 (1800-30), 
363, 364- 

.Anassthetics, discovery of, 428. 

.Anderson, Robert, Major, 440, 444, 445, 
464. 

.Andre, John, Major, 217, 218. 

Andros, Sir Edmund, in New York, 53; 
in New England, 78, 79 ; Governor of New 
Jersey, New York, and New England, 84. 

.Annapolis, Md., 94; U.S. III. Convention, 
276, 277, 281. 

Anne's War, Queen, 110. 

Antietam, 458T 

Anti-Masonic Convention, 370. 

.Anti-Nebraska Men, 398. 



Appomattox, 464. 

Arkansas, 375. 

Armada, the, 30. 

.Army, first revolutionary, 160-167,203-220 
(1812), 339-343; of the Potomac, 449, 453, 
454 ; Virginia, 449, 452, 453, 454, 464 ; of the 
Cumberland, 449, 452; of the West, 449, 
Trans -Mississippi, 449; of Tennessee; 
452; of Ohio, 452; Atlantic plain, the, 
569. 570. 

.Arnold, Benedict, 165, 210, 217, 218. 

Argus, frigate, 341. 

.Arlington, Lord, and Virginia, 40, 41. 

.Arthur, Chester A., 435, 499, 500. 

.Asbury, Bishop, 323. 

.Ashburton, Lord, 378, 

.Assumption, of revolutionary debts, 290- 
293. 

Astoria, 331. 

.Atkins, Samuel, 153. 

.Atlanta, 427, 463, 591. 

Atlanta, the, 458. 

Auburn, 364. 

.Authors (1640-1776), 152, 156 (1776-1800), 
313-317 (1800-1830), 359-360 (1830-1860), 
434,436(1860-1900), 585. 

Aztecs, the, 20, 21. 

B 

Bacon, Nathaniel, 40, 41. 

Baker, Edward D., 392. 

Balboa, 17. 

Baltimore, 311, 312, 342, 354. 357. 380, 386. 
394. 395, 403, 428, 477- 

Baltimore, Lord (see Calvert). 

Bancroft, George, 365, 434, 585. 

Bank, U. S. (1791), 293, 294; charter re- 
fused, 344; of 1816, 344, 362, 363; and 
Andrew Jackson, 371,372; banks, state, 
422, 423, 491 ; banking system, national 
(1863), 473, 474- 

Barlow, Joel, 315, 359. 

Barron, Commodore, 334. 

Bayard, James A., 343. 

Bay Psalm Book, The, 152. 

Bear State, The, 385. 

Beauregard, General, 444, 449, 45o. 

Bedticks, 323. 

Beecher, H. W., 365. 

Bell, Ale.xander G., 584. 

Bell, John, 403, 404. 

Bemis Heights, 210. 

Bentley, C. E., 514. 

Benton, Thomas H., 320, 366, 392, 437. 

Bergen (Fort Nassau), 83. 

Bering, Vitus, 18. 

Berkeley, Lord, 83. 

Berkeley, Sir William, 38-42. 

Beverley (Mass.), 323. 

Bible, the, 314. 

Bidwell. John, 511. 



613 



6i4 



INDEX 



Bills of Rights (i?76-i8oo), 186-191 ; (1800- 

1860), 417, 418; U865-1900), 483. 
Bingiiamton, 312. 

Birney, Janies G., 376, 377, 380, 400. 
Bishop, first R C, 323. 
Black, James, 476. 

Biackstone, " Commentaries," 171, 172. 
Blaine, James G., 435, 499, 501. 
Blair, Francis P. Jr., 472. 
Blair, James, 42. 
Blanco, General, 518. 
Bland, R. P., 498. 
Bland bill, 498. 
Bland dollars, 498. 
Blockade (1861-1S65), 447, 456, 457; Cuba. 

SI9- 
Blount, James H., 512. 
Bonds (1861-1865), 448, 449: (1866), 473, 474; 

(1894). 513- 
Bonhomme, Richard, 215, 216. 
Books, celebrated Colonial (1640 -1776), 

152-156; (1776-1800), 314-316; (1800-1830), 

359.360; (183&-1860), 434 436; (1860-1900), 

585, 586. 
Boone, Daniel, 214. 
Booth, John Wilkes, 465. 
Boscawen, Admiral, 121. 
Boston Ciremont), 63: "Massacre," 135: 

tea-party, 136: Port Bill, 136, 137, 159, 

311, 364, 428. 430. 
" Boston News Letter," 153. 
Boundaries, National, by treaty of 1788, 

220, 221; by treaty of Ghent (northern), 

346; Texas, 346; northwest (1842), 378; 

northwest settled (1846), 381. 
Bowdoin, Governor, 276. 
Bowling Green, 450. 
Boxer, frisjate, 341. 
Braddock, Edward, General, 118-121. 
Bradford, William, 60, 153. 
Bradstreet, Mrs. Anne, 152. 
Bragg, Braxton, General, 451, 452. 
Brant, Joseph, 210, 213. 
Brattleboro, 69. 
Brazil, discovery of, 14, 16, 17, 
Breckenridge, John C, 399, 403, 404- 
Breed's Hill, 163. 
Brick, machine-made, 357. 
Brooke, General, 522. 
Brooklyn, 427. 
Brooklyn I-ieights, 206. 
Brooks, John A., 505. 
Brooks, Phillips, 435. 
Brown, B. Gratz, 476, 477. 
Brown, Charles Brockden, 315. 
Brown, John. 402. 
Brown University, 67. 
Brush, Charles G., 584. 
Bryan. W. J., 515-525- 
Bryant, William Cullen, 317, 359, 365, 434, 

585. 
Buchanan, James, 399, 400 ; administration, 

400-403, 440. 
Buckner, Simon B. General, 450, 515. 
Buell, D. C. General, 449, 450, 452. 
Buena Vista, 382. 
Buffalo (city), 354, 3S0, 3S6. 
Bull Run, 449, 4S4. 
l?unker Hill, 163-164. 
Burgoyne, John. General, 209-211. 
Burke, Edmund, 132. 
Burlingame, Anson, 470. 
Burnett, Frances H., 436. 



Burnside, A. E. General, 452, 453, 458. 
Burr, Aaron, 295, 302, 310. 
Butler, B. F. General, 451, 502. 
Butler, William O.. 386. 



Cable, Atlantic, 430. 

Cable, George W., 436. 

Cabot, John, discovers North .America, 15. 

Cadwalader, Dr Thomas, 313. 

Calhoun, John C, 319, 337, 361, 370, 392, 
393, 394, 436, 4.37- 

California, .331,385,386; discovery of gold 
in, 300; question of admission of into 
the Union, 390-394. 

Callender, Thomas, 307. 

Calvert, George, Lord Baltimore, 92, 94, 
95, 97- 

Cambon, M., 522. 

Camden, S. C., 217. 

Canadians, where settled, 582. 

Canals, in 1830. 354. 355 (1830-1860), 43o. 

Cane-sugar, 325. 

Cape Cod, 56. 

CaVey, Mathew, 315. 

Carleton, Sir Guy, 165. 

Carolinas, discovered by John Cabot, 15; 
grant of, 97; the Grand Model, 97 ; popu- 
lation, 98; industries, 98; divided, 98; 
Indian wars, 99; the Tuscaroras, 99. 

Carpet, brussels, 430. 

(Carpenters' Hall, 138. 

Carriage factories. 356. 

Carteret, Sir George, 83. 

Cartier, Jacques, 25. 

(Carver, John, 59. 

Cary, Samuel F., 479. 

Cass, Lewis, 386, 392. 

Castine, no. 

Catawbas, the, 3. 

Catholics, Roman, Indian missions, 5; in 
New York, 52, 53; in England, 57; in 
Massachusetts, 79 ; in Maryland, 93, 94, 
95,96; as explorers. Ill ; in Quebec, 137, 
18S, 323. 

Cedar Creek, 462. 

Census (1790), 3" (i8oo), 327 (1830), 353, 
354,362 (1840), 43S (i860), 425,426,427. 

Centennial exhibition, 497, 584. 

Central Falls, 357. 

Cervera, Admiral, 519, 520. 

Chadds Ford, 209. 

Chambers, B. J., 499. 

Champlain, Samuel de, founds Quebec, 
26; character of, 27; antagonizes the 
Five Nations, 27, 2S. 

Chancellorsville, 458. 

Channing, William EUery, 359. 

Chapultepec, 383. 

Charitable Institutions, 490. 

Charles I. and Maryland, 92-95, and New 
England, 61, 6^, 68. 

Charles II. and \'irginia, 33,40, and New 
Netherland, 53, and New England, 76, 77. 

Charleston, 63. 

Charleston, S. C, 216, 311, 354, 403. 

Charter, of Massachusetts (1629), 62; an- 
nulled, 78; new charter (1691), 79. 

Chase, Salmon P., 364, 392, 415. 

Chattanooga, 452. 

Chemicals, 356. 

Cherokees, the, 3- 



INDEX 



615 



Chesapeake, frigate, 334, 335. 

Chester, Pa., 86. 

Chicago, 403, 427, 428, 472, 499, 501, 502, 
506; Exposition, 591,592. 

Chicago, the, 507. 

Chickasaws, the, 3. 23. 

Childs, Lydia Maria, 359. 

China, 470. 

Chinese, exclusion of, 501, 504, 582. 

Chloroform, 428. 

Choctaws, the, 3, 23. 

Churches (1776-1800), 323. 

Cientuegos, 521. 

Cincinnati, 312, 354, 356, 399, 476, 479, 499, 
305, 511- 

Cities (1776-1S00), 311, 312; population 
(1790), 311, 323; (1830), 354; streets, 354; 
improvements, 353, 583; compromise of 
1850, 391-394, 396; (i83o-i86o),428; popu- 
lation (i865-i9oo),488, 583. 

Civil war, the, causes, 441-444; campaigns, 
444-465. 

Clarendon, Lord, 97. 

Clarke, George Rogers, 213, 252. 

Clarke, James Freeman, 364. 

Clarke, William, 331. 

Clay, Henry, 320; Speaker, 337, 343; nomi- 
nated for President, 370; compromise of 
1833. 371- 378, 380, 381: and the Whigs 
(1S40), 378; nominated for President, 380, 
391, 393, 396, 436, 437- 

Clayborne, William, 95. 

Clemens, Samuel L. (" Mark Twain"'), 435, 
585. 

" Clermont," the, 361. 

Cleveland, 312; 479, 499. 

Cleveland, Grover, 435; President, 502-506, 
510-514. 

Clinton, De Witt, 3.'0. 

Clinton, George, 295; Vice-President, 332, 
336. 

Clinton, Governor, 276. 

Clinton, Sir Henry, 2i2,'2i3, 216. 

Coal, 324, 357. 

Cobb, Howell, 392. 

Cochrane, John C, 460. 

Cockburne, Admiral, 342. 

Colfax, Schuyler, 472. 

College of Philadelphia; 313. 

College training (1776-1800), 312; (1830- 
1860), 433. 

Collins Line, 433. 

" Colonial," term, 138. 

Colonies, the, natural divisions andgroups, 
144; trade, 144; population, bond and free, 
144; nationalities, 145 ; population, num- 
bers, 145; redemptioners, convicts, 145; 
pig-iron, 146; agriculture, 146-48; trade- 
centers, 146, 147; the New England peo- 
ple, 147; the planters, 148; education and 
schools, 148, 141); the Assemblies, 150; 
taxation by Parliament, 150; the suffrage, 
150, 151; politics'and'politicians, 151; pam- 
phleteers, 152; books (1640-1776), 152-156; 
newspapers, 153; the almanac, 155, 156; 
travel, 156; inns, 156; industrial restric- 
tions, 157. 

Colorado, 480, 496. 

Colt, Samuel, 428. 

Columbia University (King's College), 
149. 

Columbus, Christopher, calls the natives 
" Indians;" birth, 10, 11; youth, n; and 



Marco Polo, 11; theory of reaching Asia, 
11; and Toscanelli, 11; el3[orts to equip a 
fleet, II, 12, aided by Isabella, 12; se- 
cures a fleet, 12; first voyage, 12; dis- 
covery of land, 13; exploration of the 
islands, 13; second voyage, 13, 14; third 
and fourth voyages, 14; liis ideas of the 
new region, 14; death, 14. 

Columbus, Ohio, 476. 

Commerce, ruin of American (1801-1812), 

^328-338;. (1848-1900), 593, 594-597. , 

Commission (1898), on treaty of peace 
with Spain, 523. 

Committees of Correspondence, 151, 
160. 

" Common Sense," by Thomes Paine, 152, 
155- 

Compromise of 1850, 391-394. 

Conant, John A., 502. 

Concord, 160-162. 

" Concord Hymn," 161. 

Confederacy, Southern, 440, 445. 

Confederate States of America, 440, 445. 

Confederation, the, formation, 235-240; effi- 
ciency, 241; defects, 242, 243; difficulties, 
245-247; limitations, 247-249; attempted 
reform of, 250; work of, 251, 252; State 
land cessions to, 252-254 ; collapse of, 
263-282, bills of credit issued by, 268-273, 
277-280; general character of, 255-265. 

Congress, first Colonial (1689), 54; Albany 
(1754), 117; Stamp Act (1765), 130, 131; 
continental (1774), 138-140. second con- 
tinental (1775), 161, at York, Lancaster, 
Baltimore, 209; character of (1774-1776), 
222-230; of the confederation (1781-1789), 
251; confirms Washington's cabinet, 291; 
creates executive departments, 291; or- 
ganizes the judiciary, 291; on assump- 
tion of the debts, 292-293; charters the 
United States bank (1791), 294; fugitive 
slave law (1792), 294; proposes amend- 
ments to the constitution, 294; lays em- 
bargo (1794), 300; and Jay's treaty, 300, 
301; Spanish treaty (1793), 301, alien and 
sedition acts, 306-309; repeal alien and 
sedition acts, 329; non-importation act, 
334; its repeal, 336; " Macon bill," the, 
336; declares war with England, 337; 
Foote resolution, 369; Force bill (1833), 
371; independent treasury, 375, 378; atti- 
tude toward slavery, 294, 386, 388-394, 397, 
398, 401, 441-444, 459, 460; resolution to 
preserve the Union, 446; and reconstruc- 
tion, 467-481; silver question in, 498, 508, 
512; tariff (see under); presidential suc- 
cession, 500; polygamy, 501; civil service, 
501; electoral vote, 503; interstate com- 
merce, 504, 509; department of labor, 504; 
Chinese exclusion, 504; Sherman act, 
508, original package law, 509; Louisiana 
lottery, 509; public lands, 509; repeal of 
the Sherman act, 512; issue of bonds 
(1894), 513; Spanish-American war, 517, 
519; Hawaii, 523, 524; Cuba, 524; Porto 
Rico, Philippines, 524; attitude toward 
manufactures, 604; toward the banking 
business, 608 (and see Banks). 

Congressional Caucus, 340, 350. 

Connecticut, 67, 69, 7o-73 ; the Dutch in, 
70; becomes a state, 177; case of Win- 
throp vs. Lechmere (1727-28), 257, 258; 
rank (1790I, 311 (1800), 327. 



6i6 



INDEX 



Conquest, tlic Spanish, origin (see Co- 
lumbus, Christopher) ; extent of. 
20-24. 

Constantinople, 9, 10. 

Constitution, the, frisjate, ^41. 

Constitution of the United States, forma- 
tion, 2H3-2SH; the I'resident, 284, 285, 286; 
the courts, 284; the legislature, 283, 284 ; 
slavery, 285 ; tlie vice-prosid(Mit, 284, 285 ; 
the Virginia Plan, 286, 287 ; the New Jer- 
sey Plan, 286, 287; compromises, 287; 
sources of, 287,288; ratification, 288, 289 
(see amendments). 

Constitutions, of the state.^ (1776-1800'), 
168-201; framcrs of, 178-184; Bills ol 
Rights, 186-191 ; the Legislature, 191-194 ; 
the Executive, 195, 196; the Judiciary, 
196-198: Administration, 198, 201 ; the 
Suffrage, 199, 200; general character of 
the .American, 255-263 (1800-1860), 417- 
424 (i860- 1 900), 482-496; eminent framer.s 
of (1800-1860), 424. 

" Continental," the term, 138. 

Continental hills, 269-281. 

" Contraband of War," 459. 

Conventions, constitutional (1776-1800), 
172-184; Lecompton, 415; Kentucky 
(1849), 438; "Restoration," 1865, 468, 
469; " Reconstruction, 1867-68, 469; ^Iis- 
sissippi (1890), 491-493, 548, 549; South 
Carolina (1895), 493; Louisiana (i8g8), 
494. 495- 

" Conway cabal," 212. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 319, 360, 434. 

Cooper, Peter, 362, 479. 

Corinth, 451. 

Cornwallis, Lord, 207, 208, 216, 217, 218. 
219, 220. 

Coronado, Francisco de, 23. 

Corporations, 422, 490. 

Cortes, iH, 21. 

Corwin, Thomas, 392. 

Cotton, 312. 324. 

Cotton duck, 356. 

Cotton gin, 312. 

Cotton mills, 323, 356. 

Cotton prints, 356. 

Cotton-yarn, 323. 

Council Bluffs, 438. 

Coureurs de hois, 112. 

Courts, the (see judiciary). 

Cowdrey, Robert H., 505. 

Cranfill, J, B., 511. 

Crawforcf, William H., 350, 351. 

Creeks, the, 3, 23. 

Cristobal Colon, the, 520. 

Crittenden, John J., 441. 

Cromwell and Maryland, 96. 

Croton aqueduct, 428. 

Crown Point, i2i. 

Cuba (Spanish-.American War), 516-519, 
520-522, 523, 524. 

Cuban junta, 518. 

Culpepper, Lord and Virginia, 40, 41. 

Cumberland Gap, 450. 

Cumberland (R. f.), 323. 

Cumberland River, 450. 

Cumberland, the, 455. 

Cumberland Road, 361. 

Cumberland Valley, 462. 

Cunard Line, 433. 

Cunningham, Charles E., 505. 

Curtis, G. W., 365,435. 



Cushing, Caleb, 475. 
Custer, General, 590. 
Cutlery, table, 430. 



Da Gama, voyages, 15 

Daguerreotypes, 428. 

Dakota Indians, the. 3. 

Dale, Sir Thomas, 36. 

i)allas, George M.,'380. 

Dalton, Ga., 463. 

Dana, Richard Henry, 359. 

Daniel, William, 502. 

Dartmouth, 361. 

Daven[)ort, Iowa, 427. 

Davie, William R., 306. 

Davis, David, 472. 

Davis, Jefferson, 364, 392, 440, 445, 464. 

Day, Secretary, 522, 523. 

Dayton, 312. 

Dayton, William L., 392, 399. 

Dedham, 325. 

Deaf and dumb, schools for, 364. 

Dearborn, General, 342. 

De Bienville, 114. 

Debt, public (1789), 290-293; (1861), 4^8; 
(1865). 473. 

Declaration of independence, 166, 167, 203, 
204 ; character, 234, 235, 264. 

De Kalb, 209. 

Delaware, founded. 90 ; the Dutch and the 
Swedes, 90; William Penn, 90; separated 
from Pennsylvania, 91 ; convention, 175; 
rank (1790), 311 ; (1800), 327. 

Delaware, Lord, in V'irginia, 35. 

De Leon, Juan Ponce, 22. 

De Lome, Dupuv, Sefior, 518. 

De Monts, 26. 

Dentistry, 324, 430. 

Denton, Daniel, "Brief Description of 
New Vork," 152. 

Departments, executive, 291. 

Department of Labor, 501, 504. 

Democrats (Jeffersonian), 328. 329: (Jack- 
son), 351 ; nominations (1828), 352; elec- 
tion of 1828, 368; national convention 
(1832), 370; (1836), 374; convention (1840), 
376; convention (1844), 3S0; convention 
(1848), 386; convention (1852), 394; (1856), 
399; (i860), 403, 404; (1864), 461; (186S), 
472; (1872), 477; (1876), 480; (1880), 499; 
(1884), 502; (1888), 505; (1892), 510; (1896), 
514. 515; (1900), 525. 

Democrats, " Straight-Out " (1872), 477, 

Detroit, 342. 

Dewey, George, Commodore, 519; admiral, 
522. 

Dickinson, John, 138, 154. 

Dingley, Nelson. 515. 

Directory, the French, 304, 305, 306. 

Discoveries, notable (1752-1776), 143; (1776- 
1800), 323, 324; (1800-1830), 356, 357; (i*<3o- 
1860), 429, 4^0. 

District of Columbia, in compromise of 
1850, 3'V394. 

Dodge, Mary Mapes, 436. 

Donelson, Andrew J., 399. 

Dorchester, 62, 63, 71. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 392, 396, 401, 403, 404, 

^441. ^ 

Dover. 69. 

Dow, Neal, 499. 



INDEX 



617 



Drake, E. L., 430. 
Drake, Sir Francis, 21. 
Draper, John W., 428. 
Dred Scott, 400, 415. 
Diiane, William J., 372. 
Dubuque, 427. 
Dudley, Joseph, 78, 79. 
Duke of York's laws, 53- 
Dulany, Daniel, 154. 
Dunlap, William, 359. 
Duquesne, Marquis, 115. 
Durham, no. 
Dutch East India Company, 47, 



Early, Jubal, General, 462. 

Edison, T. A., 584. 

Edmunds act, 501. 

Edmunds, George F., 501. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 143. 

Eggleston, Edward, 436. 

Elberon, 500. 

El Caney, 521. 

Elections, presidential (see Democrats, 
National-Republicans, Federalists, Re- 
publicans). 

Electoral Commission, 480. 

Electricity and its applications, 143, 583, 584. 

Eliot, John, Rev., 65, 152. 

Elizabethtown, 83. 

Elizabeth, Queen, and American coloniza- 
tion, 30-32. 

Ellmaker, Amos, 370. 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 291, 306, 310. 

Emancipation proclamation, 458-460. 

Embargo, 335, 336. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 161, 359, 435, 585, 

Endicott, John, 62. 

"Endless chain," 512. 

English, William H., 500. 

Enterprise, frigate, 341. 

Episcopal church, in Virginia, 45; in New 
York, 52, 53; in Massachusetts, 63, 79; 
in New Hampshire, 68; in Maryland, 96; 
in the Carolinas, 98; first convention of, 
323. 

Equal rights party (1884), 502. 

" Era of Good Feeling," 345. 

Eric, the Red, 9. 

Ericson, John, 455. 

Erie, 114. 

Essex, the, 507. 

Ether, 428. 

Evarts, W. M., 475. 

Evans, Captain, 520. 

Evacuation Day, 220. 

Everett, Edward, 403, 404. 

Eutaw Springs, 219. 

Executive, the, early state (1776-1800), 195, 
196; C1800-1860), 420, 421; (1865-1900), 486, 
4S7. 

Exports and imports (1870-1900), 594-597- 

Expositions. Philadelphia (1876), 498, 584; 
Atlanta (1881), New Orleans (1884). Chi- 
cago (1893), Nashville (i8g6), 591, 592. 

Express business, 432. 

Exeter, 69. 



Fair Oaks, 4S4. 
Fajardo, 522. 
Fall River, 356. 



Farewell address, 303. 

Farmer, Moses G., 584. 

Farmer, the American, 593, 596; 606, 610. 

Farmers' grange, or league, 510. 

Farragut, David G., Admiral, 461, 463. 

Federal convention, origin, 276-282; frames 
the constitution of the United States, 
283-288. 

Federalist, the, 315. 

Federalists, the, 295; fall of, 304-310; char- 
acteristics of, 320, 321; 328, 329, 332, 340, 
345, 350. 

Ferryboats, 361. 

Field, James G., 511. 

Fillmore, Millard, 365, 386, 387, 399; 470. 

Fire-brick, 357. 

Fire engines, 428. 

Fire-grates, 357. 

Fiske, Clinton B., 505. 

Fiske, John, 436, 5S5. 

Fitch, Augustus, letter of, to President 
Jackson on nullification, 414, 415. 

Fitch, John, 324. 

Five Forks, 464. 

Five Nations, the, supremacy of, 2, 3; 
clans of, 4; and Champlain, 27, 28 ; and 
the French, 28, 29 ; and the IJutch, 47-50, 
54,55; and the French, 113. 

Flannels, 356. 

Florida, the, 457. 

Florida, 15, 22, 24; contest between French 
and Spanish over, 26, 124: Jackson in, 
345,346; purchased, 346,387,495. 

Foote, A. H., Admiral, 450, 451. 

Foote, Mary Hallock, 436. 

Foote Resolution, 369. 

Force Bill, 371. 

Ford's Theatre, 465. 

Forts, Orange, 48; Nassau, 47, 48; Le Boeuf , 
115; Michault, 115; Duquesne, 116; 
Necessity, n6; Washington, 207: Lee, 
207; Edward, Ticonderoga, 209; Stan- 
wix, 210; Erie. 342; McHenry,342; Sum- 
ter, Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, 440; 
Henry, Donelson, 450; Morgan, Gaines, 
463 ; Sumter, 464. 

Fra Mauro map, 10, 11. 

Framers, of state constitutions, 178-185; 
of U.S. Constitution, 283. 

Francis I., King, 25. 

Franklin (Pa.), 115. 

Franklin, Benjamin, in Philadelphia, 87; 
opposes the Penns, 89; agent of Pennsyl- 
vania, 89 ; and the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, 90: and slavery, 102; and General 
Braddock, 118; Thackeray's travesty 
of, in the Virginians, iig; opposes the 
Stamp Act, 128; examined in parliament, 
132; experiment with the kite, 143; Poor 
Richard's Almanac and "The Way to 
Wealth," 155, 156, 167, 208, 220 ; as a force 
in the revolution, 225, 232, 233, 251; on 
paper money, 268, 269; a framer of the 
constitution, 283; death, 309; printing 
house, 314; autobiography, 315, 316; 
notes on Virginia, 315; first American 
edition of works, 35g ; ideas of govern- 
ment, 529, 533. 

Fredericksburg, 458. 

Freeport, 111., 308. 

Free-soil party (liberty partv), convention 
(1848), 386, 388-404; convention (1852), 395. 

Frelinghausen, Theodore, 380. 



6i8 



INDEX 



Fromont, John C, 384, 385, 399, 400, 460, 
461. 

Frenan, Philii), 315. 

French, the, in America ; treatment of the 
Indians, 5, 6, 26, 27, 28, 105 ; colonization, 
25-29; claims, 105, 106; explorations by, 
106-108; at war witli the English, 108, 
109-124; results of the war, 124; plant 
plates as boundary marks, 114. 

French colonization, be^run, 25, 26; extent, 
27, 29. 

French fieet, in the revolution, 212, 213, 
219, 220. 

French revolution, affects America, 297- 
301,304-307. 

Frontenac, Count, 109. 

Frontier, the colonial, 148; Pennsylvania 
(1794). 2q6: (1785-1795), 301. 

Fugitive slave law (1792), 294. 

Fulton, Robert, 361. 

Furnaces, 357. 

Fustians, 323. 



Gadsden, Christopher, 131. 

Gadsden, James, 386. 

Gage, Thomas, General, 159-162. 

Gaines's Mill, 454. 

Gallatin, AUiert, 295, 321, 343. 

Galloway, Joseph, 154. 

Garfield, James A., 435, 499, 500. 

Galvanized iron, 357. 

Garrison, William L., 396. 

Gas, 356. 

Gates, Horatio, General, 210, 211. 

Gayarr6, Charles E. A., 359, 365. 

" General Order No. 1," 454. 

Genet, Citizen, 298. 

George II. and Georgia, 99; King George's 
war, 113. 

Georgia, grant of, 99; history of under the 
trustees, 100; industries. 100. 101; slavery, 
101; theWesleys, 101; Whitetield, 102; the 
charter surrendered, 103; conventions, 
176: rank (1790), 311; (1800), 327; (1830), 
425; 495- 

Gerniantown, 153. 

Gerry, Elbridge, 2S3, 295, 304; vice-Presi- 
dent, 340. 

Gettvsburg, 458. 

Giddings, Joshua R., 392, 416. 

Gilder, R. W.,436. 

Glass, 323. 

Gloucester, N. J., tea-party, 136. 

Godfrey, Thomas, 153. 

Goodrich, S. G., 359. 

Goodyear, Charles, 428. 

Goldsboro, 464. 

Gold, discovery of, in California, 390; its 
effect, 391-394, 562. 

Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, s6; 68. 

Gosnold, Bartholomew, 56. 

Graham, William A., 395. 

Grand model, the, for the Carolinas, 97. 

Grange, farmers', 510. 

Granger, Francis, 375. 

Grant, Ulysses S.,365; in the civil war, 450, 
451, ^52, 454, 458, 461, 462, 463, 464. 466, 471; 
President, 472-477; renominated. 477; sec- 
ond term, 477-481; 499; death, 503; Me- 
moirs, 586; character, 588. 

Gray, Robert, Captain, 331. 



Gray, Elisha, 584. 

Great Meadows, 116. 

(ireat Western, the, 432. 

Greeley, Horace, 364, 434, 476, 477. 

Greenbacks (1873), 478. 

Greenback party (1876), 479; (1880), 499; 

(1884), 502, 
Greene, Nathaniel, 218, 219. 
Greenfield, Mass., 430. 
Green Mountain Boys, 162, 209. 
Guerriere, frigate, 337, 341. 
Guiteau, Charles J., 500. 
Gunboat policy, 334. 
Guns, rifled, 430. 
Gutta-percha, 430. 

H 

Hale, E. E., 365. 

Hale, John P., 392, 400. 

Halifax, 165, 166. 

Halleck, Fitz Greene, 359. 

Halleck, Henry W., General, 449, 451. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 154; at the Annapo- 
lis convention, 281; chosen to federal 
convention, 281; Secretary of Treasury, 

291, 292-294; 297, 303; a Federalist leader, 

292, 295, 297, 300, 307; and the election of 
Jefferson, 310; "The Federalist," 315; 
works, 359; and State sovereignty, 412; 
ideas of government, 529. 

Hamlin, Hannibal, 392; vice-President,403. 
404. 

Hancock, John, 159. 

Hancock, W. S., 499. 

Harnden, W. F., 432. 

Harper's Ferry, 402. 

Hartford, 70, 71, 356, 364. 

Harrison, Benjamin, 435, 506. 

Harrison's Landing, 454. 

Harrison, William Henry, 320, 337, 341, 342. 
367,375,376-377,378. 

Harte, Francis Bret, 436, 585. 

Harvard, John, 65. 

Harvard University, 65; 361. 

Harrisburg, 312. 

Havana, 124, 518, 519, 520. 

Haverill, no. 

Harvey, Sir John, 38. 

Haves, R. B., 365; President, 480-481; 497- 
499. 

Hayne, Robert Y., 369, 370. 

Hawaiian islands, 511, 523, 524. 

Hawkins, Sir John, 30. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 359, 365, 435. 

Hendricks, T. A., 477, 4S0, 502. 

Henrietta Maria. Queen, 92. 

Henry VII., King, 12, 15. 

Henry, Patrick, first appearance as a law- 
yer, 45; famous speech, 46; 129, 130, 
141. 

Herkimer, Nicholas, General, 210. 

Hessians, the, 165, 207, 208. 

Hildreth, Richard, 365, 435. 

Hobart, Garret A., 435, 514. 

Hobkirk's Hill, 219. 

Hobson, Richmond P., 520. 

Hoe & Co., R., 429. 

Holland, J. G., 435. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 359, 364, 435, 
585. 

Holy Alliance, 349, 350. 

Homestead law, 404. 



INDEX 



619 



Hood, John B., General, 463. 

Hooker, Joseph, General, 452, 45S. 

Hooker, Thomas, 71. 

Hopkins, Stephen, 67. 

Hopkinson, Francis, 154 315. 

Hopkinson, Joseph, 315. 

Hornet, frigate, 341. 

Horse-cars, 428. 

Hosjiitals, 428. 

House of Burgesses, 36, 

Howe company, the, 430. 

Howe, Elias, Jr., 429. 

Howe, William, General, 163-166, 206, 

2og. 
Howells, W. D., 436, 585. 
Hutchinson, Anne, 66. 
Hudson Bay Company, 380. 
Hudson, Henry, 47. 

Huguenots, 25,' 26; in the Carolinas, 98. 
Hull, General, 342. 
Hurons, the, and Champlain, 5. 

I 

Idaho, 508, 

"Ik Marvel," 365. 

Illinois, admitted, 348; rank (i860), 425; 

rank (1900), 581. 
Immigration, 318; foreign (1S20), 353, 417; 

(1830-1S60), 426, 433; (1800-1900), 557, 563, 

565, 566, 567, 582. 
Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, 471. 
Imports and exports (1870-1900), 594- 

597. 

Indentured servants, 145. 

Indiana, 34S; rank (i860) 425. 

Indianapolis, 427, 479. 

Indians, the, so named by Columbus, i; 
characteristics, i; antiquity of, 2, race 
divisions, 3; numbers, 3; domestic life, 
3, 4; ideas of religion, 5; Indian ideals, 
5; relations with the whites, 5, 6; vestiges 
of, 7; reservations, 7, 8; and the Dutch. 

' 47-50, 54, 55; in New England, 60, 70; 
Pequot war, 72; King Philip's war, 77; 
in New Jersey, 84; in French and Indian 
war, 105-124: war in the Northwest (1785- 
'95), 302; (1800-1900), 559-562, 563, 566,590. 

Indian Territory, 590. 

Indigo, culture, introduced, 98. 

Individualism, the struggle for, in Amer- 
ica, 598, 612. 

Ingersoll, Jared, 340. 

Inns, 156, 317, 318. 

Insurance, 324. 

Internal improvements (1800-1830), 354, 

Inventions, notable (1752-1776), 143; (1776- 
1800), 323, 324; (1800-1830), 356, 357; (1830- 
1860), 429, 430. 

Interstate Commerce, 504, 509. 

Iowa, 387; rank (1900), 5S1. 

Iowa, the, 520. 

Iredell, James, 413. 

Irish, where settled, 582, 

Iron, galvanized, 430, 

Iroquois race, the, 3. 

Irving, Washington, 317, 319, 360. 

Irwinsville, Ga., 464. 

Isabella, Queen, 12. 

Island No 10, 451. 

Italians, 582. 

luka, 451, 



Jackson, Andrew, 320; General, 342; at New 
Orleans, 343, 350, 351; Democrats, 351, 
366, 367, 368; administration, 369-375; 
proclamation (1832), 371; and the bank, 
371,372. 

Jackson, Mich., 398. 

Jackson, " Stonewall," General, 454. 

James I. and Virginia, 32-34; 36, 37, 38. 

James II. and New York, 53, 54; and New 
England, 78, 79, 80; and New Jersey, 
83, 84. 

James, Henry, Jr,, 436. 

Jamestown, Virginia, 34, 36. 

Japan, 470. 

Java, frigate, 341. 

Jay, John, 176, 182, 220, 291; "The Fed- 
eralist," 315, 413. 

Jay's treaty, 300, 301. 

Jeans, 323. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 39, 43, 167; and the 
Declaration of Independence, 232, 234, 
235; Secretary of State, 291, 292, 293, 303; 
political leader, 295, 297, 302, 307-309; 
Vice-President, 302; President, 310; notes 
on Virginia, 315; political teachings, 320- 
322, 327, 529, 532, 533; administration, 328- 
336; character, 328, 329; and the Monroe 
doctrine, 349, and State sovereignty, 405- 
416. 

Jesuits, the, missionaries to the Indi- 
ans, 27. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne, 436. 

Jews, in Maryland, 94. 

Johnson, Andrew, 364, 392 ; vice-president, 
460, 461 ; president, 465-471. 

Johnson, Hale, 514. 

iohnson, Herschel V., 403, 404. 

Johnson, Richard M., 374, 375. 

Johnson, Sir William, 113, 121. 

Johnston, Albert S., General, 449, 450, 462, 
463, 464. 

Johnston, Joseph E., General, 449, 452, 
453, 454- 

"Join or Die," flag, 116. 

Joliet, Louis, 106. 

Jones, John Paul, 215, 216. 

Joseph, Louis, Marquis de Montcalm, 121- 
124. 

Judiciary, the early state (1776-1800), 196, 
197; national, 290, 291 ; state (1800-1860), 
421,422; (1865-X900), 487,488. 

K 

Kansas, 396-398, 399, 401, 402. 

Kansas City, 525, 

Kearney, Stephen W., 384. 

Kearsarge, the, 457, 507. 

Kent, James, 359, 

Kentucky, 103; conventions, 177,214; ad- 
mitted into the union, 295; consti- 
tutional convention (1849), 438, 439; 
Kentucky resolutions, 307-309, 395 ; appli- 
cation, 405, 416; rank (1830-1S60), 425. 

King Philip, 6; war, 77. 

King's Chapel, 79. 

King's College, 149. 

King, Rufus, 295, 332, 336. 

King, William R., 394. 

King's Mountain, 218; rank (1790), 311; 
(1800), 327. 



6zo 



INDEX 



Kirkland, Ohio, 4^8. 
" Know-Notliings, 399. 
Knox, Henry, 291. 



Labor Reform party (1872), 476. 

Labrador, sijjhted by Eric the Red, q; 
discovered liy Cabot, 15. 

Ladrones, 522.' 

Lafayette, Marquis de, 208, 209, 219. 

Land cessions, 252-254. 

Land companies, early, 253. 

Land, public, 373. 

Land speculation, 422. 

Lane, Joseph, 403, 404. 

Lanpdon, John, 336. 

Lanier, Sidney, 436. 

La Salle, Robert de, 107-109. 

Laws of Virginia, 153. 

Law lectures, first, 313. 

Lawrence, Captain, 341. 

Lawrence, frigate, 341. 

Laws, American, 570. 

Lazarus, Emma, 430. 

Lea, Henry C, 585. 

Lecoinpton constitution, 401. 

Lecompton convention, 415. 

Lee, Charles, General, 212, 

Lee, Fitzhugh, 517. 

Lee, Richard Henry, 166. 

Lee, Robert E., General, 364, 403, 449, 454, 
458, 462, 463, 464. 

Legislature, the, early state (1776-1800I, 
191-194; (iSoo-i862),4i9, 420; (1865-1900), 
484-486. 

Leisler, Jacob, 54. 

Lemoyne, Francis, 376. 

Leopard, frigate, 335. 

Levering, Joshua, 514. 

Lewis, Meriweather, 331, 

Lexington, 160, 162. 

Liberty Partv (Liberal Party) Conven- 
tion 1838, iSao), 376; (1843). 380; 385. 

Liberal Republicans (1872), 476. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 364; debates with 
Douglas, 401, 402; elected President, 
403, 404, 439, 440; inaugural, 441, 444; on 
the national iiolicy (1861), 444; adminis- 
tration, 444 465; Emancipation. 458-460 ; 
renominated (186.1), 460; second inaug- 
uration, 461 ; aeatn,465; character, 586^ 
588; ideas of government, 530, 531, 532, 

^ 543. 544- 

Lincoln, General, 216, 219, 220. 

Lincoln, Levi, 295. 

Linens, 357. 

Liverpool, 432. 

Lithography, 357. 

Little Belt, frigate, 337. 

Livingston, Robert R., 167. 

Lockwood, Belva \., 502. 

Logan, John A., 501. 

Lombardy Poplar, 323. 

London and PlymoutJi Company, grants 
to, 32-34- 

Longfellow, Henry W.. 359, 364, 435, 585. 

Longstreet, James. General, 452. 

Lookout Mountain, 453. 

Lords of Trade, 117. 

Louisiana, purchase, 330, 331; exploration, 
331; admitted, 340; convention (1898), 
494. 495. 



Louisiana Lottery, 509. 
Louisburg, 114, 121. 
Louisville, 312, 354. 451. 
Louis XIV, 109; war of, 109. 
Louis -XVI, 297. 
Lovejov, Elijah P., 390. 
Lowell (Mass.), 357 
Lowell, James R., 435, 585. 
Lundy's Lane, 342. 
Luzon, 523. 
Lynn, 325. 

M 

Macedonian, The, frigate, 341. 

Macready, 364. 

Madison, Dolly, 343. 

Madison, James, advocates a more perfect 
union, 276, 277, 281; aReiiublican leader, 
295, 307, 308; "The Federalist," 31^; 
President, 336; war message, 3'?6, "338; 
and the Monroe Doctrine, 349: Virginia 
resolutions, 410; ideas of government, 
537, 538. 

" Madison War," 339. 

Madison, Wis,, 427. 

Magazines (i776-i8oo),3i4, 316; (1800-1830), 
358 ; (1830-1860), 433, 434; ( 1860-1900), 585, 
586. 

Magellan, Ferdinand, 17, 18. 

Mahew, Jonathan, 154. 

Maine, 68. 

Maine, The, 518. 

Man, Albon, 584. 

Mangum, W. P., 375, 392. 

Manila, 519, 522. 

Mansfield, 357. 

Manufactures, colonial, 146, i57 ; (1776- 
1800), 323, 324, 325: (1800-1830), 356,357; 
(1830-1860), 430. 

" March to the Sea," the, 463. 

Marco, Polo, 11. 

Maria Teresa, the, 520. 

Marietta, 312. 

Marion, General, 217. 

"Mark Twain," 435, 585. 

Marquette, Jacques, 106. 

Marshall, Humphrey, 392. 

Marshall, John, 205, 304,309,310,365,366. 

Martha's \ ineyard, 56. 

Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore, 92: 
the charter, 93; religious toleration, 93; 
St. Mary's settled, 94; discrimination in 
religion, 94, 95; religious sects, 93, 04; 
difticulties with Clayborne, 95; Crom- 
well, 96; the charter cancelled, 96; re- 
stored to the family of the proprietor, 
97; rank (1790). 311; (1800), 327, 495. 

Masilla Valley, 386. 

Maskokian race, the, 3. 

NIason and Dixon's Line, 89, 90; divides 
free from slave soil (1790), 311, 353. 

Mason, Captain John. 68. 

Mason, James M., 392, 453. 

Massachusetts, settlement, 59-68, 73-82; 
the revolution in, 159-167; Bill (1774). 
mo; convention, 177; rank (1790), 311: 
(1800), 327: (1830-1860), 425: rank (1900), 
581. 

Matamoras, 382. 

Matchett. Charles H., 514. 

Mather, Increase. 153. 

Mather, Richard, 152. 



INDEX 



62 1 



Mayaguez, 522. 

Mayflower, The, ship, 58, 59: compact, 58, 

59: on the Ohio, 253. 
McClellan, George B., General, 449, 453, 

4S4, 458, 461. 
McCormick, Cyrus, 428. 
McCulloch, B., General, 449. 
McDonou.irh, Commodore, 342. 
McDowell Irwin, General, 449. 
" McFingal." 154. 
McGuire, Matthew. 514. 
McKinley, V/illiam, 43c,; tariff, 508, 509, 

511; President, 5,14-525; re-elected, 525, 
McLean, John, 37c,, 
McMaster, John B., 585. 
Meade, George B., General, 458. 
Meadville, 357. 
Medical lectures, first, 313. 
Memphis, 451, 452. 
Menendez, 24, 26. 
Merrimac, the, 454-456. 
Merrimac, the (Spanish-American war), 

520. 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 323; Oregon 

mission, 379. 
Mexican war, 381-384. 
Mexico, 20. 

Michigan, 375; rank (1900), 581. 
Middle-of-the-Road, Populists, 525. 
Migration within the United States (1800- 

1900), 555-564. 
Milan decree, 333. 
Miles, General, 522. 
Mill Springs, 450. 
Mills, Roger Q., 506. 
Minneapolis, 510. 
Minuit, Peter, 48. 
Missionary Ridge, 453. 
Mississippi, admitted, 348; convention 

(1890), 491, 492, 493. 
Mississippi Valley, the, 571, 572. 
Missouri, admitted, 348; rank (i860), 425; 

(1900), 581. 
Missouri Compromise, 347, 348. 
Mjtchell, D.G., 365.435- 
Mitchill, Samuel L., 315. 
Mobilion race, the, 3. 
Modocs, 590. 
Mohicans, the, 6. 
Mohawks, the, and the Dutch, 50, 5i, 54, 

55, 210. 
Money, Continental, 218; paper issues 

during the confederation, 267-280. 
Monitor, the, 455, 456. 
Monroe doctrine, the, 349, 350, 461, 504. 
Monroe, James, 334, 336; administration, 
. 345-350. 
Montana, 508, 565. 
Matanzas (Cuba), 520, 
Montcalm. Marquis de, 121-124. 
Montejo, Admiral, 519. 
Monterey, 382. 
Montesquieu, "Spirit of Laws," 170, 171, 

228, 255. 
Montgomery, Ala., 440. 
Montreal, 25; fort, iii; 124. 
Montgomery, Richard, General, 165. 
Moquis, 21, 23. 

Morgan, Daniel, General, 218. 
Mormons, the, 438. 
Morris, Robert, 283, 291. 
Morris, Thomas, 380. 
Morocco leather, 325. 



Morse, Jedediah. 314, 
Morse, Samuel F. B., 429. 
Morton, Levi P., 506. 
" Mother Goose," 153. 
Motley, J. L., 365, 435, 585. 
Mowing machine, 428, 429. 
Mugwumps, 502. 
Murfreesboro. 451, 452. 
Murray, Lindley, 316. 
Murray, William Vans, 306. 
Muslin, 357. 

N 

Nails, 323. 

Napoleon L, 306, 330, 332, 333. 335, 336, 343, 
349- 

Napoleon III., 461. 

Narvaez, 22. 

Nashua, 430. 

Nashville, 428, 462, 463, 464. 

Nashville, the, 519. 

National conventions (1831-1832), 370; 
(1836), 374; (1838, 1839, 1840), 376; Lib- 
erty party (1843), 380 ; Democrats (1844), 
380; Whigs (1844), 380; Democrats (1848), 
386; Whigs (1848), 386; Free Soil (1848), 
386; Democrats (1852), 394; Whigs (1852), 
395; Free Soil (1852), 395; American 
party (know nothing), 1856,399; Demo- 
crats (1856), 399; Republicans (1856), 
399; Democrats (i860), 403; constitu- 
tional union, 403; Republican, 403; Re- 
publican (1864); Radical Republican, 
460; Democratic (1864), 461 ; (1868), 472; 
(1872), 476, 477; (1876), 479, 480; (1880), 
499; (i88j), 501,502; (1888), 506; (1892), 
510; (1896), 514, 515; (1900), 525. 

National Democratic party (1896), 515. 

National party, the (1896), 514. 

National Republicans, 351; nominations 
(1828), 352- election of 182S, 368. 

"National," the term, 138, 141. 

Native Americanism, 420. 

Natural rights, doctrine of, 258, 259 (see 
James Otis), 598-612. 

Navigation acts, in Virginia, 42; in New 
England, 81, 82, 126, 127. 

Navy, in the revolution, 214-216; (1812), 
•^41-344 ; confederate (1861-1865), 454, 457, 
458, 463; National (1861-1865), 450, 451, 
452, 453, 454-458 ; in Spanish-American 
war, 519-523. 

Neal, John, 359. 

Nebraska, 396, 397, 472. 

Newburg, Washington's letter from, 278. 

Negroes (see slavery, reconstruction, suf- 
frage). 

Neutrality, Washington's proclamation 
of, 297, 298; Washington's counsel on, 
303. 

New Amsterdam, 48-53. 

Newark, 356. 

New England, exploration, 56; Plymouth 
company, 56; Captain John Smith, 56; 
the separatists, 57, 58; the Pilgrims, 
58, 59,60; the Mayflower, 59: settlement 
of Plymouth, 59 ; William Bradford, 60; 
town meeting, 60; and the Indians, 60; 
Captain Miles Standish, 60; Pilgrims 
ana Puritans distinguished, 61, 62; the 
Massachusetts charter, 62; John Endi- 
cott, 62; Salem, 62,63; John Winthrop, 



622 



INDEX 



63; Boston, Charleston, Roxbury, Dor- 
chester, Wntertown, 63; church fellow- 
ship, 63; tlio town organization, 64: edu- 
cation, 65; John Harvard, 65: Harvard 
university, 65; Rev. John Eliot, 65: 
Roger Williams, 66, 67, 71, 72; Anne 
Hutchinson, 66; Rhode Island, 66, 67; 
New Hampshire, 68, 69: Vermont, 6g, 70; 
Connecticut, 70 74; Hartford, 70; the 
Dutch, 70; the younger Winthrop, 70; 
Rev.lhomas Hooker, 71; Pequot war, 
72, 73; Rev. John Daveni)ort, 72, 73; 
Milford, Guilford, Stanford, 73; popula- 
tion, 73: union of (1643). 74! the (Junk- 
ers, 74-76: Kinu Philip's war, 77: Charles 
H. and New England, 77, 78: James II. 
and New England, 78, 79; the Connecti- 
cut charter, 78, Sir Edmund Andros. 
78; Joseph Dudley, 78; the Episcopal 
church, 79; the suftrage, 76, 79; tyranny 
of Andros, 79, 80; witchcraft, 80, 81: 
navigation acts, Ki, S2. 

New Hampshire, 68, 69 ; conventions, 175 : 
rank (1790), 311; (1800), 327. 

New Hampshire grants, 69; created liy 
Charles II., 77. 

New Haven, 356. 

New Jersey, settlement, 83; divided, 83, 
84; proprietors, 83, 84; Elizabethtown, 
83; Byllinge and Fenwick, 83; Berkeley 
and Carteret, 83, 84 ; Salem, Burlington. 
84; William Penn, 84, 85; the Indians, 
84: Sir Edmund Andros, 84; convention, 
175; provisional constitution (1776), 230; 
rank (1790), 311; (1800), 327. 

New Me.\ico, 385, 386, 391-394- 

New Netherland, 47-53. 

New Orleans, 124; battle of, 343, 325, 354, 
428,451; exposition, 591. 

Nevvspaijcrs, colonial (1690-1776), 153: 
(1776-1800), 313. 314; (1800-1830), 357. 
358; (1830-1860), 433. 434; (1860-1900), 
585. , 

New Sweden, 90, 91. 

New York, city, founded, 48, 51, 53. M9; 
first description of, 152: in the revolu- 
tion, 206, 212, 213, 292, 354, 356, 357, 427, 
428, 4,32, 472. 

New York, settlement, 47; East India 
company, 47, 48; Fort Nassau, 47, 48; 
Fort Orange, j8; Manhattan, 48; New 
Amsterdam, 48; Dutch ideals, 4S-50 ; 
the Five Nations, 50; the Connecticut 
frontier, 50, 51; Collegiate Reformed 
church, 51; policy of the West India 
company, 51, 52: persecution for religion, 
52: PeterStuyvesant, 52, 53; the English 
conquest of, 53,54; boundaries, 53; the 
Duke's Law, 53; Sir Edmund Andros, 
53. 54; Jacob Leisler, 54; William and 
Mary, 5355; convention, 176; rank 
(1790), 311; (1800), 327; (1830-1860), 425; 
rank (1900), 581. 

Niagara, 124. 

Nicholas, George, 410. 

Nicholson, Francis, 42, 43. 

Non-importation scheme, Jefferson's 33i. 

Non-intercourse act, 335, 336. 

Norse. Sagas, 9. 

North Dakota, 508, 565. 

Northmen, 9. 

North Bennington. 356. 

North Carolina, provincial congress. 176; 



rank (1790), 311; (1800), 327; (1830), 425, 

495. 
North, Lord, his five measures, 136, 137, 

220. 
Northwest Territory, 253, 254. 
Norton. Charles E., 365. 
Nullification, S. C, 37o (see also State 

Sovereignty, under State). 



O'Conor, Charles. 476, 477. 

Oglethorpe, James, 99-102. 

O'Hara, General, 220. 

Ohio, settled, 253; admitted into the 
Union, 302, 333; rank (1800), 327; (1830- 
1860), 425; rank (1900), 5H1. 

Ohio Land Company, 253, 313. 

Oil (petroleum), discovered, 430; use be- 
gun, 584. 

Oklahoma, 591. 

Omaha, 511. 

Omnibuses, 428. 

Orders in Council, 333. 

Ordinance of 1787, 253, 254. 

Oregon, 331: claims of tlie nation 10,347; 
struggle for, 379, 380, 381: Marcus Whit- 
man, 370, 380. 

Oregon, tlie, 519, 520. 

Original Package Law, 509. 

Otis, James, i^p, 130, 153, 154, 258. 

Oxford, Mississippi, 451. 



Palo Alto._382. 

Pacific Railroad, 403, 404. 

Pacific Slope, The, 571, 572. 573. 

Paine, Thomas, " Common Sense," 152, 
155; "Age of Reason," 315. 

Facicenham, General, 343. 

Panama, Isthmus of, 17. 

Pan-.\merican Congress, 504. 

Panic (1837). 374. 375; (iS73), 477. 47^; 
(1893), 512. 

Papal line (Alexander VI), 16, 20: ignored, 
30. 

Paper Mills, 356. 

Parker, Joel, 472. 

Parliament and American Taxation, 125- 
140. 

Palmer, John M., 515. 

Parkman, Francis, 365, 434, 585. 

Parties, political, rise of, 290-296: organi- 
zation, 295 ; attitude toward State 
Sovereignty, 405-416 (sec under party 
names, also Suffrage, Reconstruction, 
National Conventions). 

Patent Leather, 356. 

Patent Office, 357, 429. 

Patrons of Husbandry, 509. 510. 

Patroons, The, 48, 49, 51. 

Pavements, Wooden, 428. 

Peace Convention. 441. 

Peacock, frigate, 341. 

Pelican, frigate, 341. 

Pendleton, George II., 461. 

Pemaquid, 6S. 

Pemberton, J. C, General, 451, 452. 

Penn. William, 84-87. 

Pennsylvania, 85-90; W'illiam Penn, 85-87; 
Chester, 86; the Great Law, 86: Phila- 
delphia, 86, 87; Benjamin Franklin, 87, 



INDEX 



623 



88 ; slavery and anti-slavery, 88 ; the 
French and Indian War, 88; disputes 
with the Penns, 88, 89 ; Mason and 
Dixon's Line, 89, go ; University of 
Pennsylvania, 90; convention, 176; ranlc 
(1790), 311; (1800), 327; (1830. i860), 425; 
rank (1900), ^81. 

Pennsylvania Calendar, The, 153. 

People's Party (1892), 511. 

Pequots, The, 6, 72. 

Perry, O. C, Commodore, 470. 

Perry, Oliver H., Commodore, 341. 

Perryville, 451. 4S2. 

Personal Liberty Bills, 388, 394. 

"Pet Banks," 372. 

"Peter Parley," 359. 

Peters, Phillis Wheatley, 315. 

Philadelphia, 86, 138, 167, 207, 283; the fed- 
eral capital, 293, 311, 313, 354, 356, 364, 
386, 399, 427, 430, 497, 525. 

Phihp 11,30. 

Philippines, 519, 522, 523. 

Phillips, Wendell, 396. 

Pickens, General, 217. 

Pickens, F. W., 444. 

Pierce, Franklin, 394; administration, 395- 
399- 

Pike, Zebulon, 331. 

Pinckney, C. C, 283, 295, 310, 332. 336. 

Pinckney, Thomas, 302. 

Pilgrims, The, 58-62. 

Pins, by machinery, 430. 

Pinzon, The Brothers, 12, 15. 

Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 121-124; 
opposes the Stamp Act. 132; 142. 

Pittsburg, 115, 312, 354, 356, 357, 502. 

Pittsburg, insurrection near, 296; popula- 
tion in 1800,354; 395; 514. 

Pizarro, 18. 

Plant-cutters' riot, the, 42. 

Planters, colonial, 148. 

Platforms, political party (see national 
conventions and under party names). 

Plattsburg, 342. 

Plymouth company, the, 56. 

Plows. 312. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 359, 364. 

Polanders, 582. 

Polk, James K., 380; administration, 381- 
386. 

Polygamy, 479, 501. , 

Pomeroy, Samuel C, 502. 

Pontiac, 6, 7; war, 133. 

Popham, Sir John, 56. 

Pope, John, General, 451, 454. 

Poplar, Lombardy, 323. 

Population (1776), 145; (1790), 311; (1812), 
339; (1830), 353; {i860), 425; changes in 
(1865-1900), 488; (1900), 569. 

Populist party, 525. 

Porter, D. D., Admiral. 451, 452. 

Port Royal, settled, 26. 

Porto Rico, 520, 522, 523, 524. 

Portsmouth, 69. 

Postage, 437, 438. 

Postal cards, 589. 

Postal service, colonial, 156, 157; (1776- 
1800), 317, 325; (1800-1830), 363; (1830- 
1860), 431, 438; (1860-1900), 589. 

Postage stamps, 325, 437, 438. 

Portugal, voyages inaugurated by, 15,16. 

Preble, Commodore, 330. 

Prescott, William, Colonel, 164. 



Prescott, W. H.. 365, 434. 

Presque Isle, 114, 124. 

Price, Sterling, General 449, 451. 

Prince of Parthia, the, 153. 

Princeton, 149. 

Printing press cylinder, 429. 

Proclamation line, 7. 

Prohibition party (1872), convention, 476; 

(1876), 479: (1880), 499; (1884), 502; (1888), 

505; (1892), 511; (1896), 514; (1900), 525. 
Providence, 430. 
Ptolemy, 11; computes circumference of 

the earth, 11. 
"Public Occurrences," first American 

newspaper, 153. 
Punishments, 364. 
Puritans, the, in New England, 61-65; in 

Maryland, 94, 96. 
Putnam, Rufus, General, 253. 



Quakers, the, and the Dutch, 52; in New 
England, 74-76; in New Jersey, 83-85; in 
Maryland, 94, 06: the Carolinas, 98. 189. 

Quebec, founded, 26; fort, 111, 118, 121; fall, 
122-124; province of, 131; act, 137. 

eueensware, 356. 
uincy, Josiah, 154, 339. 



Railroads (1830), 354, 355, 362; (1830-1860), 
430-432; (1860-1900). 584, 589; (Northern) 
Pacihc, advocated, 399, 403, 404; Pacific 
begun, 590. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, efforts to colonize 
Virginia, 31, 32. 

Randolph, Edmund, 291, 295. 

Reaping machine, 428, 429. 

'■ Reconcentrados." 516. 

Reconstruction (1865-1876), 467-481; (1876- 
18S0), 497-499: the States (1865-1900), 482- 
496; the suffrage, 491-496; 542-554. 

Redemptioners, 145. 

Reed, Thomas B., 507. 

Reid, Whitelaw, 510, 523. 

Republicans (Democrats, 1792), 295; 296- 
301; election (1796), 302-303; (1797-1801), 
304-310. election (1804), 332; (1808), 336; 
(1812), 340; (1816), 345; (1824), 350; (1884), 
501. 

Republican party, founded, 398; national 
convention (i860), 399; national conven- 
tions (1864), 460; Radical Republicans 
(1864), 460; (1868), 472: (1872), 477; (1876), 
479; (1880), 499; (1888), 506; (1892), 510; 
(1896), 514; (1900), 525. 

Representation (1865-1900), 484, 491-496. 

Resaca de la Palma, 382. 

Resumption (1875), 478, 479, 498, 499. 

Revere, Doctor, 357. 

Revolver, the 428. 

Rhode Island, 66, 67, 73, 74, 75; becomes a 
state, 177; case of Trevett vs. Weeden, 
262, 263; rank (1790), 311; (1800), 327; 496. 

Rhodes. James F., 585. 

Rjban, Jean, 26. 

Rice, East India, culture of, introduced, 98. 

Richmond, 449, 462, 463, 465. 

Ripon, Wis., 398. 

Rivers, influence of in American history, 
574-579- 



624 



INDEX 



Roads (irTd-iSool, 317, 318. 

Robertson, lames, 214. 

" Rock of Chickamauga," the, 452. 

Rolfe, John, 36. 

Roosevelt, Tnc-odore, 521, 525. 

Rosecrans. W. S.. General, 451, 452. 

Ross, General, 342. 

Rousjh-Riders, 521. 

Roxbury, 6'',. 

Rubber, 42S. 

Rush, Benjamin, 315, 316. 

Rush, Richard, 352. 

Russell, Earl, 453. 

Russell, John. 476. 

Russia, 347. 445, 470. 

Rutledge, John, 131. 



Sacramento, 427. 

Sail-cloth, 356. 

Salem, 62, 66, 159, 356. 

Salt, 324. 

Salt Hake, 438. 

Sampson, Admiral, 520. 

San Francisco, 385, 427,, 502. 

San Jacinto, 453. 

San juan Hill, 521. 

Santa Anna, General, 382. 

Santa Fe, 385. 

Santiago, 522. 

Savannah, loi, 216, 432. 

Savannah, The, 432, 464. 

Sawyer, VVilliarn E., 584. 

Scandinavians. 582. 

Schenck, Robert C, 392. 

Schley, W. S., Admiral, 520. 

Schools in Colonial Times, 14S, 149; in tlie 
Northwest Territory, 254; system ol tree 
begun, 313; (1800-1S30), 360, 361, 423, 424; 
(1830-1860), 433; North and South (1840), 
439; comparative migration to, 555, 567. 

Schuyler, General, 210. 

Schofield, J. M., General, 464. 

School Lands. 489. 

Scioto Comijany, The, 253. 

Scott, Winfield, 319; General, 342, 382, 384, 
395. 453- 

Scranton, 427. 

Screws, wooden, 430. 

Seabury, Samuel, 154. 

Secession (1811), 334; of South Carolina, 
4'?g, 440; Lincoln on, 444. 

Sedition Act, 306-308. 

Semnies, Raphael, Captain, 458. 

Seneca Long-House, 3. 

Separatists, The, 57, 58, 61. 



ieneral, 36s, 452, 462, 463, 



Sergeant, lohn, 370. 
.Serapis. Tne. 215. 



irap 

Seven Cities of Cibola, 23. 

Sevvall, Samuel, 153. 

Seward, W. H., 365, 392, 393, 454, 

Sewer-i)ipes, 356. 

Sewing Machine, 429. 

Sewing Silk, 357. 

Seymour, Horatio. 472. 

Shatter, General. 522. 

Shakespeare, William, "The Tempest," 
based on William Strachey's " Reper- 
tory, etc.," 152. 

Shannon, frigate, 341. 

Shay's Rebellion, 278. 

Sheet-copper, 356. 



Shenandoah, The, 457. 

Sheridan, Philip H., 462, 464. 

Sherman Act, So>*. 

Sherman, John, 499, 508. 

.Sherman, W. T., Ge 
464. 

Sherman, Roger, 167. 

Shiloh, 450. 

Sigourney, Lydia H., 359. 

."-^ilk, culture of, 100, 101. 

Silver (money), 478: demonetization, 497; 
Sherman Act, 508; issue (1896), 515. 

Silver Party (1896), 515. 

Simms, William G., 359,365, 434. 

Sing Sing. 364. 

Sinking Fund, 423. 

Sioux, The, 3. 

Sirius, The, 432. 

Six Nations, 117. 

Slavery, introduced into Virginia, 37: in 
Georgia, 100, 101,102; in Colonial Amer- 
ica, 145, 149; in Northwest Territory, 
254; in Southwest Territory, 254; fug- 
itive slave law (1792), 294; extent 
(>79o). 311; effect of cotton gin on, 312; 
(Texas), 379, 382: (California), 385, 386, 
387; agitation (1S4H-1860), 38«-404; and 
State Sovereignty, 405-416: effect on in- 
dustry, north and south (1840), 438, 439; 
emancipation, 45H-460 

Slaves, number (1790), 311. 

.Slater, Samu<?l, 323. 

Slates, for schools, 356. 

Sleeping-Cars, 432. 

Slidcll, John, 453. 

Smith, Green C., 479. 

Smith, Captain John, in Virginia, 34, 35; 
explores New England, 56, 57; his" True 
Relation of Virginia" (1608), 152. 

Smith, Josei)h, 438. 

Socialists, 525. 

Social Democrats, 525. 

Socialist Labor party (1896), 514; (1900), 
525- 

Socialization, growth of, in America, 598- 
612. 

Sons of Liberty, 129, 151. 

.Soto, Ferdinand de, 23, 24. 

South Carolina, conventions, 175; rank 
(1790), 311; (1800), 327; nullification, 370, 

. 371; rank (1830), 425; secession of, 439, 
^40: declaration of causes and address 
(1800), 442-444; convention (1895), 493; 
convention (1868), 546, 547. 

South Dakota, 508, 565. 

Southgate, T. H., 514. 

Sovereignty, state, 189, 369: development 
of the idea (1776-1860), 405-416; residu- 
ary, 412. 

Spain, discovery of .Vmerica, 12-19; con- 
quest of America, 20-24; treatment of 
Cuba, 516-519; at war with ilie United 
States, 519-523. 

Spanish American war, 516 523. 

"Specie circular," 374. 

.Specie payments, act for, 478, 498, 499. 

Speiulation (1800-1830), 355, 368. 

Spottsylvania, 462. 

Stamp .■\ct, 128-132, 141. 

Stanciish, Miles, ^9, 60. 

Stanton, E. M., 471. 

Star of the West, the, 440, 445. 

Stark, John, Colonel, 209. 



INDEX 



635 



"Stars and Stripes," 210. 

States, first org-anization (1776-1800), 168- 
173; New Jersey, constitution (1776), 173- 
175; New Hampshire, 175 ; Virginia, 175 ; 
Pennsylvania, 175; South Carolina, 175; 
Delaware, 175; North Carolina, 176; 
Georgia, 176; New York, 176; Connec- 
ticut, 177; Rhode Island, 177 ; Kentucky, 
177; Tennessee, 177, 178; Bills ol Rights, 
186-191; the legislatures, 191-195 ; the 
executive, 195-196; the judiciary, 196- 
198; administration, 198; the suffrage, 
199, 200; later constitutions, 201, 202; 
rank in (1800), 353; in (1830), 354; in 
(i860), 425; constitutional development 
(1800-1860), 417-424; constitutional de- 
velopment (1860-1900), 482-496; acqui- 
sition of population, 5S5-567, 582, 583. 

St. Augustine, 24, 26. 

St. Clair, Arthur, General, 302. 

Steam navigation, 324 (1800-1830), 361, 432, 

Steam Power, 430. 

Steamship, first transatlantic, 432. 

Stedman, E. C, 436. 

Steel squares, 356. 

Stephens, Ale.xander H., 392, 440. 

Stereotyping, 356. 

Steuben, Baron, 212. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, 392. 

Stevenson, Adlai E., 510, 525. 

Stewart, G. T., 479. 

St. John, John P., 502. 

St.Leger, Barry, Colonel, 210. 

St. Louis, 480, 505. 

St. Mary's, Md., 9j. 

Stockton, Commoaore, 385. 

Stockton, Frank R., 436. 

Stone River, 452. 

Stony Point, 213. 

Stow, Marietta L., 502. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 365, 396, 434. 

St. Peter's Church, New York City, 323. 

Strachey, William, his "True Repertory," 
etc., 152. 

Straw Braid, 325. 

Straw Paper, 357. 

Strikes, 59S. 

Sunday schools, 323. 

Suffrage, the, in colonial times, 150, 151; 
early state (1776-1800), 198-201, 266; ex- 
tension opposed by the Federalists, 321; 
extension favored by the Democrats, 
322; (1800-1860), 418, 419, 420; at the 
South (1865-1900), 491-496, 543-550; in 
Colorado, Texas, Rhode Island, Utah, 
496; struggle for (1789-1900), 527-554; 
negro, 459, 460, 467, 469, 473, 482, 491-496, 
539, 540, 543-549; woman, 540-542, 549-553- 

Sumner, Charles, 364, 416, 

Sumpter, the, 458. 

Sumter, General, 217. 

Sutter, Captain, 390, 391. 

Swedes, the, on the Delaware, 90. 

Syracuse, 312, 324. 



Tallahassee, the, 458. 

Tampa, 521. 

Taney, Roger B., 367, 372, 400 (Dred 

Scott). 
Tariff, proposed in 1783, 273-276; divides 

political parties (1816), 344; oi abomin- 



ations. 352, 357; (1828), 369; (1832), 370, 

501, 506; McKinley, 508, 509, 511; Wilson, 

513; Dingley, 515; Porto Rico. 524. 
Tarleton, Banastre, Colonel, 218. 
Taylor, Bayard, 365, 434. 
Taylor, John, 410. 
Tavlor, Zachary, 319, 382, 383, 386, 387, 

394- 
Taxation, of the colonies proposed, 125- 

140; (1861-1865), 448. 
Tea-Parties, 136. 
Tecumseh, 337. 
Telegraph, The, 429. 
Telephone, 584. 
Temperance Movement, 364. 
Tennessee, 99 (Frankland, Wautauga); 

convention, 177, 178, 214: admitted into 

the Union, 302; rank (1790), 311; (1800), 

327. 
Tennessee, The, 463. 
Tennessee Centennial, 591. 
Tenure of Office Act, 471. 
Texas, 346, 347: annexation, 379, 381, 382, 

386, 387; in compromise of 1850, 391, 394, 

496; rank (1900), 581. 
Thaxter, Celia L., 4^6. 
Theatre, The, 363, 364. 428. 
Thomas, George H., General, 450, 452, 

463. 471. 
Thompson, A. M.,499. 
Thompson, Jacob, 392. 
Thurman, Allen G. 506. 
Ticonderoga, 124. 
Tilden, S. J., 480. 
Tiles, 356. 
Tippecanoe, 337. 

"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," 376, 377. 
Titusville, 430. 

Tools, mechanics', 356; machinists', 430. 
Toombs, Robert, 392. 
Topeka, 398. 
Tories, The, 166, 213. 
Toscanelli, 11. 

Town, Tlie, in New England, 64. 
Townsend, Charles, Acts, The, 134. 
Trade, (see navigation acts); colonial. 

Trades, 318, 319. 

Transportation, Colonial, 144; (1776-1800), 
317, 318; (1800-1830), 354, 355. 361. 362; 
(1830-1S60), 430, 431, 432, 433. 

Travel, 156, 317, 318; (1800-1830), 361. 

Treasury Notes, 478. 

Treaty of Utrecht (1713), no; of 1763, 124, 
125, 126; with France (i778), 212; of 1783, 
220, 221: Netherlands (1782), Sweden 
(1783), Prussia (1785), Morocco (1787), 
251; with France, 297: Jay's Treaty, 300, 
301; with Spain (1795), '301; of Gre'en- 
vilie (1795), 302; Barbary Powers, 330; 
of Ghent, 343, 346; 1819 (Florida), 346; of 
Washington (1842), 378; (1846), 381; 
Mexican (1848), 386; Mexican (1853), 386; 
China (186S), 470; Japan (1854), 47o ; 
England (1871), 475. 

Trent Affair, The, 453. 

Trenton, 207. 208, 324. 

Trevett vs. Weeden, 262. 

"Triangle, The," Erie county. Pa., 252. 

Trumbull, Jonathan, 154, 315. 

Trunk Lines, 432. 

Tubing, wrought-iron, 430. 

Tuscaroras, The, 6, 99. 



626 



INDEX 



Tyler, John, 375, 376, 377; administration, 

378. 381. 441. . , „ 
Tyler. Moses Coit, 436. 585. 

u 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 396. 

Union of 1643, 74; the confederation, 222- 

254; a more perfect necessary, 255-282. 
Union Labor I'arty (888), 505. 
Unitarians, 94, 188. 
United Labor Party (1888), 505. 
United Christians. 52^. 
University of Pennsylvania, 90, 149, 
Utah, 391-^394. 43^. 496. 501. 
Utrecht, treaty of, no, iii. 

V 

Valley Forj^e, 209, 211, 212. 

Van Dorn, E.. General, 451, 452. 

Van Buren, Martin, 320. vice-Presideut, 
370; administration, 375-377; 386,400,437. 

Varnish, 357. 

Venansfo, 115. 

Venezuela, 513. 

Vera Cruz, 383. 

Vermont, 69, 70, 103; convention, 176; ad- 
mitted into the Union, 295; rank (i79o). 
311; (1800), 327. 

Verrazano, 25. 

Vespucius, Americus, voyage to the Wo.st 
Indies, 15; voyageto l^razil, 16; his name 
ijiven to the new world, 17. 

Vicksburg, 451. 452, 458. 

Vinland, 9. 

Virginia, colonized, 31, 32; Raleigh's work 
in, 32; ^'ranted to the London company, 
32,33; the charter of, 33; first settlement, 
34; Captain John Smith in, 34. 35; new 
charter, 36. House of Burgesses, 36; 
slaves and indentured servants, 37; the 
charter annulled, 3S: .Sir William Berke- 
ley, ^8, 39; granted to Lord Arlington 
and Lord Culpepper, 40; Bacon's rebel- 
lion, 40. 41; effect of the navigation acts 
on, 42; the Plant-cutters' riot, 42; Wil- 
liam and Mary College, 42. 43; Alexander 
Spotswood, governor, 43: collision of 
with New France on the Ohio, 45; cur- 
rency in, 45: laws of, 153; convention, 
175; on dissolution of relations with the 
crown, 230; resolutions, 30S, 395. 405-4'6; 
rank (i79o), 3ii; (1800), 327. 

\'irginia, the, 454-456- , , „ 

Vote, right to, the struggle for (1789-igoo). 
527-554- 

w 

Wachusett, the, 457. 

Wages (1776-1800). 312. 

Waite, M. K., 47";. 4S1. 

Wakerteld, W. H. T., 5o5- 

Waldseemiiller, Martin ; gives name to 
America, 17, 

Walker, Amasa, 552. 

Wallace, Lew., General, 365, 450. 

Warner, C. D., 365- 

Wars. Indian, 6, 72, 77, 90; Bacon's rebel- 
lion, 40; in New Netherland, 53; French 
and Indian, 105-124; King William's, 109; 
Queen Anne's, 110; George the Second's, 



113: of the Spanish succession, 113; Pon- 
tiac's, 133; 1&12, 339-344; the Civil, 441- 
465; Spanish-.American, 516-523. 

Washington, George, in the French and 
Indian war; 115-122; Commander-in- 
chief, 163, 164; military campaigns, 206- 
209. 211-214, 219. 220; Newburg letter, 278; 
urges a more iierfect union, 279; delegate 
to the federal convention, 281; inaugur- 
ated President, 289; administrations, 
290-303; farewell address, 303, 589. 

Washington, admitted into the Union, 508. 

Washington City, 292-293, 312; burned, 
342, 449- 

Waterford, 115. 

Water su|jplv. public, 323. 

Watson, F. E., 515. 

Wayne, Anthony, General, 213. 

Weaver, James 13., 499, 511. 

Webster Daniel, 319,361; reply to Hayne, 
369. 375, 378, 392, 393. 396, 436. 437; ideas 
of government, 529, 530, 531, 534, 535- 

Webster, Noah, 314, 315. 316, 359, 360. 

Weem's " Life of Washington," 316. 

Welde, Thomas, 152. 

Wells & Co., express, 432. 

West, A. M. 502. 

Western Union Company, 450. 

Westport, 379, 380. 

Wethersfield, 71. 

Wesley, John and Charles, loi. 

Western Reserve, 252. 

Weyler, Valeriano, 516. 

Wheeler, General, 522. 

Wheeler. W. A.. 480. 

Whigs, 369, 370, 372, 375, 376, 377: National 
convention (1831), 370; platform, 372; 
(1836), 374, 375; National convention 
(1839). 376; (1840-1848), 378, 387; pro- 
gram (1840), 378; convention (1844), 380, 



385; convention (1848), 386; convention 
(1852), 395. 
Whiskey Insurrection, 296. 



VVhitefield, George, 102. 

White House, 309, 342, 343. 

Whitman, Marcus, 379, 380. 

Whitman, Walt, 365. 

Whitney, Eli, 312. 

Whittier, John G., 365, 396, 434, 585. 

Wilkes, Charles, Captain, 453. 

William III, King, favors colonial union. 
43. 

William and Mary, and New York, 53, 54: 
and New England, 79, 82; and Mary- 
land, 96. 

William and Mary, college, 42, 43, 149. 

Williamsburg, 115. 

Williams, Roger, 66, 67. 

Willis, N. P.,359. 

Wilmington, Del., 90. 

VVilmot, David, 386.392. 

Wilmot Proviso, 386, 389. 

Wilson, lames, 154, 413. 

Wilson, Henry, 477. 

Wilson Tariff, 513. 

Wilson, William W., 5i3- 

Winchester, 462. 

Windsor, 71. 

Wine, 356. 

Winthfop, John, 63. 

Winthrop, Robert C, 302. 

Winthrop, Theodore, 365. 

Wirt, William, 370. 



INDEX 



627 



Wisconsin, 387. 

Witchcraft, New England, 80, Si. 

Witherspoon, John, 273. 

Wolfe, James, General, 122, 124. 

Wood, Colonel, 521. 

Woodford, Stewart L., 517, 519. 

Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 436. 

Worcester, 357. 

Worden, John L., Lieutenant, 455. 

Writers (1640-1776), 152-156; (1776-1800), 

313-317; U 800- 1 830), 359, 360; (1830-1860), 

434-436; (1860-1900), 585. 586. 
Wyoming, 508, 552. 



X 

" X Y Z " Despatches, 805. 

Y 

Yale, 313. 

Yorktown, 219, 220. 
Young, Brigfham, 438. 

z 

Zunis, 21, 23. 



McLoughlin ^Old Oregon 

A CHRONICLE 

BY 

EVA EMERY DYE 

i2mo, gilt top, uncut edges, with frontispiece, $1.50. 



Among the many interesting chapters in the history of our 
country's development, none possesses greater attraction 
than that which deals with the vast territory of which Ore- 
gon forms a part, from its occupation by a handful of British 
trappers to its acquisition by the United States. The strug- 
gle between Great Britain and the United States for the 
valuable possession, and the part played by McLoughlin of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, are here set forth in a most 
enjoyable narrative. The author has given an exceedingly 
vivid account of the picturesque life in the mountains ; of 
the trappers, the Indians, and the missionaries, regarding 
all of which she has had unusual facilities for acquiring 
information. Readers will be delighted with the narrative, 
which, while historically accurate and valuable, possesses 
all the attractiveness of a romance. 

" In ' McLoughlin and Old Oregon' Eva Emery Dye has undertaken the 
task of chronicler. She knows the history of Oregon like her alphabet, and 
writes with the assurance of knowledge. Satisfied to leave to other narrators 
the dry duty of setting out in precise order and with circumstantial detail the 
events which led to the occupation of the Northwest by the United States, she 
sketches with light but sure touch the years from 1832 to the retirement of the 
English in 1857. Truthful to history, the book yet has the richer coloring of 
romance. It is an exceedingly good specimen of the chronicle form of historic 
narrative, and furnishes much information of the methods of the Hudson's Bay 
Company and the occupation of Oregon." — Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 

"There is a charm about 'McLoughlin and Old Oregon' that is rare in 
books of the kind. The author has adorned her chronicle with a delightful ima- 
gery, and has created an atmosphere that will carry the reader back sixty years, 
and make him see, in flesh and blood, those daring men and women who were 
not only brave enough to venture into a wild country, beset with dangers un- 
known, but were also brave enough to remain when these dangers presented 
themselves in all their hideousness. She makes him see them as individuals, 
and their personal experiences and relations become intensely interesting under 
her deft and sympathetic treatment. * * * The material is handled with a 
neatness, a vigor, and an artistic touch that make every page of the book a 
delight." — Chicago Tribune. 

" Much of Mrs. Dye's book is descriptive of the domestic life of these early 
settlers. Inevitably it has, in these passages, the qualities of an imaginative 
work. But there is always a strong foundation of fact, and some of the chapters 
are more interesting than most of the recent novels." — N'ew York Times 
Saturday Review. 

For sale by all booksellers, or mailed on receipt of price by the publishers, 

A. C. McCLURG & CO., 
CHICAGO. 



Laurel-Crowned letters. 

The Best Letters of Lord Chesterfield. Edited, with 
an Introduction, by Edward Gilpin Johnson. 

The Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 
Edited, with an Introduction by Octan e Thanet. 

The Best Letters of Horace Walpole Edited, with an 
Introduction, by Anna B. McMahan. 

The Best Letters of Madame de S^vign^. Edited, with 
an Introduction, by Edward Playfair Anderson. 

The Best Letters of Charles Lamb. Edited, with an 
Introduction, by Edward Gilimn Johnson. 

The Best Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited, 
with an Introduction, by Shirley C Hughson. 

The Best Letters of William Cowper. Edited, with an 
Introduction, by Anna B. McMahan. 



Handsomely printed on fine laid paper, lOmo, cloth, 
with gilt tops, price per volume, $i.oo 

In half calf or half morocco, $2.50. 



Amid the great flood of ephemeral literature that pours from the 
press, it is well to be recalled by such publications as the "Laurel- 
Crowned Letters" to books that have won an abiding place in the 
classical literature of the world. — The Independent, New York. 

We cannot commend too highly the good taste and judgment 
displayed by publishers and editors alike in the preparation of these 
charming volumes. They are in every respect creditable to those 
who sliare the responsibility for their evAsiianct.— Journal, Chicago. 

* * * A contribution to current literature of quite unique value 
and interest. They are furnished with a tasteful outfit, with just the 
amount of matter one likes to find in books of this class, and are in 
all ways very attractive. — Siandwd, Chicago. 

It was an admirable idea to issue in such beautiful and handy 
form a selection full enough to give an adequate idea of the writers 
and their times, yet small enough to require not more than a due 
proportion of time for their reading.— Evangelist, New York. 



Sold by aU booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by 

A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers, 
CHICAGO. 



LAUREL-CROWNED VERSE. 

Edited by Francis F. Browne. 



The Lady of the Lake. By Sir Walter Scott. 
Childe Harold s Pilgrimage. A Romaunt. By Lord 

Byron 
Lalla Rookh. An Oriental Romance. By Thomas 

Moore. 
Idylls of the King. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 
Paradise Lost. By John Milton. 
The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Alexander Fope. 

2 vols. 

All the volumes of this series are from a specially-prepared 
and corrected text, based upon a careful collation of all the 
more authentic editions. 



The special merit >f these edition , aside from the graceful form 
of the boolcs, lies in the editor's reserve. Whenever the author has 
provided a preface or notes, this apparatus is given, and thus some 
interesting matter is revived, but the editor himself refrains from 
loading the books with his own writing. — The Atlantic Monthly. 

A series noted for their integral worth and typographical beau- 
ties.— Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 

A contribution to current literature of quite unique value and 
interest. They are furnished with a tasteful outfit, with just the 
amount of matter one likes to find in jooks of this class, and are in 
all ways very attractive.— Standard, Chicago 

These volumes are models of good taste in covers, typography, 
dimensions and presswork. * * * Thuy present the most r rfect 
texts of these works in existence, even Tennyson being an improve- 
ment upon the best standard edition —Journal, Chicago. 

For this series the publishers are entitled to the gratitude of 
lovers of classical English. — SchoolJournal, New York. 

Each volume is finely printed and bound ; i6mo, 
cloth, gilt tops, price per volume, $».oo. 

In half calf or half morocco, per vol., $2.50. 



Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by 

A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers, 
CHICAGO. 



THE SURGEONS STORIES, 

By Z.ToPELius, Professor of History, University of Finland. Trans- 
lated from the original Swedish, comprising— 

Times of Gustaf Adolf. 

Times of Battle ank Rest. 
Times of Charles XII. 

Times of Frededick I. 

Times of Linn^us. 

Times of Alchemy. 



Price per volume, 75 cents. The six volumes in 
a neat box, $4.50. 

These stories have been everywhere received with the greatest 
favor. They cover the most interesting and exciting periods of Swed- 
ish and Finnish history. They combine romance and history, and 
the two are woven together in so skillful and attractive a manner that 
the reader of one volume is rarely satisfied until he has read all. Of 
their distinguished author the Saturday Seview, London, says: "He 
enjoys the greatest celebrity amoung Swedish writers;" and R. H. 
Stoddard has styled them "the most important andcertainly the most 
readable series ol foreign fiction that has been translated into English 
lor many years." They should stand on the shelves of every library, 
public or private, beside the works of Sir Walter Scott. 

As many of Scott's novels give vivid and truthful pictures of 
English history, so these stories present a galaxy of historical por- 
traits more life-like than any drawn by the historian.— 7%e Chronicle, 
San Francisco. 

Topelius is evidently a great romancer,— a great romancer in the 
manner of Walter Scott. At moments in his writing there is positive 
inspiration, a truth and vivid reality that are sturiUng.— Graphic . 
New York. 

We would much prefer teaching a youth Swedish history from 
the novels of Topelius than from any book of strict historical narra- 
tive.— TAe Sun, Philadelphia. 

The author has proved himself a master of the art of combination, 
or of putting old things into new forms, and exhibiting them in new 
relations and associations. His stories are so full of stir and move- 
ment, and events are described with such spirit and minute circum- 
stantiality, as to practically disarm the critic and convert him into 
an absorbed reader.— 7%e Titnes, Chicago. 



Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by 

A. C. McCLURG k CO., Publishers, 
CHICAGO. 



Jure--; lyOl 



IVIAY 20 1901 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011414 0156 



